


Unexpected Magic

by Deejaymil



Series: The Seelie Court [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Dark Magic, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Identity, Magical Realism, Shapeshifting, Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Werewolves, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 63,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Change is in the air for the Magical Crime Response Team, still rocked from the events of the past few months. Some things are the same: McGee's still the geekiest golem that Tony's ever met and Ducky still won't tell anyone what he is, but those things are dwarfed  by everything that's changing: Abby has charmed a corner of her lab into a swamp for the newly animated Bert, Gibbs is looking more wolf than man, and there's a cat named Ziva David looking to join their team. </p><p>After Ari, Tony can't trust a cat to have their six.</p><p>But when two of their own go missing, it's up to the remainder of the MCRT to find them—even if that means betraying everything they stand for, and even if that means learning to work with the kinds of people who represent everything they aren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gibbs and the Time After

**Author's Note:**

> **Thank you to my amazing betas, both Otrame and the wonderful SatuD2. I love you both, so dearly.**
> 
> To anyone returning, this fic has been drastically rewritten as of **February, 2018**. Two new chapters (chapter 2 and 27) have been added, and the rest have been greatly edited/fleshed-out to the sum of some 10k extra words. This is in preparation for me finally finishing this series over the next coming months!
> 
> To anyone new, ignore this note and enjoy--final instalment to come soon!

Things are different now.

They bury Kate with the highest honours, posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s done them all proud. She’s done Gibbs proud. And, because of that, she’s dead.

He can never atone for that.

 

* * *

 

DiNozzo is uncharacteristically silent as they get out of the car, his heartbeat increasing in tempo along with their approach to the neatly painted front door of the Todd’s family home. Gibbs doesn’t comment on this silent panic, allowing him the privacy to hide it if he wishes to. They’ll both pretend that Gibbs can’t hear the nervous rapping of the heart that beats so strangely to Gibbs’ ears, especially when scared.

He raises his hand and raps sharply on the door, flinching at the tone of his knocking. It’s the kind of knocking that only people with bad news bring, the forceful, rhythmic beat that sends a spike of fear into the listener, whether or not they’re expecting it.

This knock is expected, but it doesn’t make it better.

Kate’s mother opens the door, and she’s exactly how Kate would have looked if she’d been given the chance to age into her beauty. The words on Gibbs’ tongue are lost for a moment with the realization that Kate will never grow to look like that. Not now. Because of them.

After a beat of silence, Tony seems to recognize the problem and takes a step forward. “Ma’am, my name is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, and this is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. We were your daughter’s colleagues, and friends.”

“You were at the funeral,” her mother says, and there’s a grief in her eyes that Gibbs knows intimately. He knows what it’s like to bury a daughter.

He’s buried two.

“Yes, ma’am,” Gibbs says softly, finding his voice. “We’ve come to pay our respects and deliver personal effects that she left behind.” The box with Kate’s medal in it weighs heavily in his pocket. He’d accepted it on Kate’s behalf, neither of her parents showing up to the ceremony, but it belongs with them.

There’s a second where it looks like she’s going to close the door in their face, before she steps aside. “Come in,” she tells them. “It’s my pleasure to have you.”

Oddly, despite the hesitation, he believes her.

 

* * *

 

On their way out of the door, Mrs. Todd stops him with a gentle hand on his elbow, letting DiNozzo go ahead. “When my daughter was alive, she would never have believed that one day our family would entertain magical beings. We were… close-minded.” She doesn’t look him in the eye, and he does her the courtesy of letting her speak. “We were wrong. Kate showed us that. She had a way of making people see her point of view…”

“I believe that.” There’s a hint of fondness in his voice he hadn’t meant to show, but Mrs. Todd’s shoulders straighten at the sound of it.

“Thank you for looking out for our daughter, Agent Gibbs.”

He should be the one thanking her but, instead, he steps out of the door and bids her farewell. Sometimes, there just aren’t words.

 

* * *

 

“I didn’t think you’d be so pleased to see me.” Jenny Shepard looks the same as ever, eyes sharp and missing nothing. Gibbs paces NCIS Director Morrow’s office, mind whirring along as he tries to adjust to what feels unadjustable.

Not Morrow’s office anymore. Shepard’s.

“We hardly parted on bad terms,” he replies shortly, pushing back memories of Paris to the back of his mind. In this room, in this building, from now on, she’s not the woman he had an ill-thought out affair with years ago: she’s his superior officer. Will he have a problem following her orders?

That’s easy to answer: only if she’s stupid about them. Fortunately, one thing Jenny has never been before is stupid.

She’s still watching him, those fox-eyes that had caught him so long ago still as dangerously captivating now, even when they’re narrowed and judgmental. “Time changes things, Gibbs.”

“Not that much time. Not that many things.” He stops pacing, sensing her restlessness. “You got something for me?”

She pushes a file across her desk, pulling her hand back before he can reach for it. They’re out of sync, strangers again. The strangeness tugs at him, the uncertainty of having an unfamiliar shifter in the room. “I don’t have time for a new case. Ari’s still out there, Director.” He opens the file, flicking a few pages through. “This isn’t even Navy.”

The worry on the air is palpable before she answers. “Not yet, it’s not. But it will be. Missing therians, starting five years ago with teenagers and young adults. Now it’s police enforcement, security workers, bouncers. Hard targets.”

“You think they’re connected, besides all being shapeshifters?” Despite himself, for a moment he allows himself the distraction before his mind inevitably returns to Ari. Ari and the bullet in Kate’s head; Ari and his team’s devastation. “There a reason behind this, or just a gut feeling?”

She barks a laugh and grins at him with an expression that’s familiar enough to ease his misgivings. “I thought gut feelings were enough for you, Jethro?”

The answer to that is plain: not enough for him to give up the hunt for Ari. She knows this, knew it before she even gave him the folder.

He takes it anyway.

“Oh, and Gibbs?” It’s with some wariness that he faces her, aware that the last time he’d seen that cocky expression on her face, they’d almost gotten shot. “Until this Ari business is sorted, I’ve taken the liberty of placing a temporary member on your team to assist with your inquiries.”

If he had hackles right now, he’d be raising them. “Who?” He doesn’t need any more complications, any more distractions, any more—

“Mossad operative, Ziva David. Ari’s control officer.”

He doesn’t mean to snarl, but also doesn’t regret it at all. Let her remember that she might hold his leash, but he still has _teeth_.

 

* * *

 

Ziva David is beautiful, charming, and Gibbs wants her near his team about as much as he wants a hole in his leg. After Ari, the smell of felines makes him twitch.

“I want you on David’s ass,” he says to DiNozzo. DiNozzo, who is trying to mask his grief by doubling his usual idiocy, shoots him a bright grin, eyes glinting wickedly with his bared fangs betraying his anger. Gibbs sees that expression and inwardly sighs, waiting for his agent to play the clown before getting to business.

“She’s not really my type, Boss.”

There it is. He reiterates: “To tail her.”

The grin doesn’t fade, but his eyes turn serious. The fangs don’t vanish. Gibbs wonders if he’s eaten since Kate, if he’s been able to stomach the taste of blood since being sprayed with her.

“I know that,” DiNozzo says, and his voice is pure hunger. “Anything else I gotta know?”

Yes. “Watch your back.”

Cats always attack from behind.

 

* * *

 

There’s a hunt. They tail Ari into a wooded slope, Gibbs running with the wolves of the Quantico Area pack for the first time in almost a decade. It’s bizarre, and familiar, and his blood is up before they even scent cat on the wind. There’s no DiNozzo here, no McGee. No reminder of Gibbs’ humanity. Just the wolves and the hunt and the knowledge that, at the end of this rapidly fading scent, there’s the man who took one of his own from him. He shares that with them, the wolves that run with him.

He shares with them Kate’s smile and her laugh and her mother’s grief. He shares with them her first day on the job, her cocky pigheadedness, her refusal to ever quit. He shares her love for her team.

He shares his love for her.

This pack knows him. Despite his refusal to re-join them after his loss, they know him. They know the flavour of his grief because they’ve shared in it too, when a murderous bastard had crept into his life so long ago and destroyed it out from under him. This reminder of his family’s death infuriates them: they howl with him and hunger for Ari’s blood.

Fornell is there. He says nothing in response to this bloodthirst.

But, when they track the leopard, they find nothing. Just pawprints and fading sweat, and the barest hint of another cat. He recognises that scent: he knows this cat that’s not Ari, but almost.

In response, he invites her to the one place he never goes himself.

 

* * *

 

The graves are well maintained, spotless despite his abandonment of them. In the place of headstones, a single, crooked tree grows from the dirt. The branches are strong, the leaves glossy: the soil below is rich with the nutrients of the bodies within the graves.

Ziva David stands below the cedar, looking upon the words set into the plaque in the trunk. There’s no surprise on her face, no shock in her scent.

He says, “You found out about my first wife and daughter.”

It’s not a question.

By the time she answers, he’s already beside her, looking down upon the grave. This cemetery is a forest, as is the Garou way. Nature begets. He’s never been here before; despite this, he knows the words on the plaque from memory.

_Shannon Fielding Gibbs_

_October 21, 1958 – February 28, 1991_

_Beloved wife, daughter, mother, sister, friend._

_Kelly Ann Gibbs_

_May 3, 1984 – February 28, 1991_

_Her daughter, who we lay to rest beside her._

_Quantico Pack Remembers._

David settles forward onto her toes, eyeing him carefully without making direct eye contact. He wonders if people can see the wolf in him as easily as he can see the cat on her. “Yes. I am sorry.” It’s evident that she’s telling the truth. The sorrow is visible in the lines around her eyes, genuine sadness at his loss. Familiarity with the pain. He wonders who she’s lost to hurt so keenly for him, a wolf she doesn’t know nor trust.

He thinks of Kate again, and how he’d known immediately that she’d walk comfortably at his side. There’s none of that here.

David’s place is not beside him.

“Then you know why Ari’s shooting at women?” His women. _His._ The memory of the bullet Ari had sent slamming through the glass into Abby’s lab as a warning to Gibbs still hammers in his heart. No doubt he’ll relive it over and over again in the coming nights, right after he stands on that rooftop with Kate’s empty eyes staring accusingly at him. A dream that’s grown so familiar to him that he wonders sometimes if he’ll one day only remember her dead.

David’s eyes narrow, her scent sharpening. The same scent that had foiled them in the woods, when they had hunted. His suspicions are assured: she knows where Ari is. That makes her the enemy. She asks, “If he wanted you to know he is the sniper, why did he not use your rifle?”

The rifle Ari had stolen from his home. A sly, sneaking cat, going where he shouldn’t. Unwary of the wolf waiting.

But Ari thinks he’s _clever._

Gibbs steps in front of her and forces her to meet his gaze. It’s a challenge, from either species, but especially affronting to hers. And he snarls: “The Bravo 51 he fired is called a _Kate_.” Her breath catches. Gibbs hates her, just a little, but he also needs her to help him with this, setting this trap for the curious cat. “If I’m wrong about this, he won’t show up.”

For the first time, he sees the slightest hint of uncertainty in her brown eyes. “And, if you are right?”

He has no right to ask this of her. The last time he’d asked this of a woman, he’d gotten her killed.

He asks anyway.

“Then I’m counting on you to back me up.”

To his shock, she agrees.

He waits when she leaves him there, by that grave and the crooked cedar. He waits, because he can hear many things on the wind: the creak and groan of the gravestone trees around him, the whispering of mourners moving through the windows, the absence of sound that Ziva leaves behind her, and a heart that beats strangely moving towards him.

DiNozzo is silent as he stands by Gibbs’ side and looks down at the shared grave where they’d buried Gibbs’ daughter curled in her mother’s arms. “I didn’t know,” he says finally. If he’d been human, if his body worked as a humans’ does, Gibbs bets he could smell the stink of shock on his skin.

“Didn’t tell you,” Gibbs responds shortly. “Didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t care to.”

That’s the price he’s going to pay to avenge Kate’s life: the discovery of his own.

“How’d they die?” DiNozzo asks, his eyes on Gibbs. Gibbs looks at them, studies them. Wonders if anyone but him has ever looked at DiNozzo for long enough to realise how strange his eyes are, shifting with his mood from human to demonic. But, no matter which, always loyal. Gibbs trusts those eyes, no matter how inhuman they are, more than he trusts David’s mundane brown.

“They were murdered,” he replies.

DiNozzo nods slowly, zero expression on his face as he works that over. No clowning here, not with just the two of them facing Gibbs’ uncertain past. “And what happened to the man who killed them?” he asks next; Gibbs knows he’s thinking of Kate.

The answer, for all of them, is simple.

“I killed him.”


	2. Ari and the End Game

In the end times, Ari Haswari regrets very little about this fatal game of cat and mouse. He doesn’t regret killing Caitlin. He doesn’t regret torturing Jethro Gibbs. He doesn’t regret dying.

He does regret his sister.

A monster is a monster, and he’s the first to admit that’s what he is—prideful, almost, of the hate that drives him—but he wasn’t always like this.

Gibbs would do well to remember that.

 

* * *

 

This is the before.

“Chase me,” says the little cat. Ziva stands on her toes, ready to sprint away, her face mischievous.

“Why? I will not catch you,” Ari teases her, always proud of his wild sister and her waifish ways. “It would be a waste of energy.”

Ziva yawns at him, contempt in every line of her runner’s body, at ease with herself even at the tender age of eleven. She will be truly frightening one day soon. “You cannot catch me because you will not try. Lazy beast.” It’s a waiting game, this one. He’ll win. He always does.

He waits for her to turn her back.

Closing his eyes with a smile playing about his mouth, waiting for her to huff and storm off in irritation. As soon as she turns, he springs, dropping easily into the leopard shape and leaping at her unprotected back. Conscious of how fragile and slim she is compared to him. She squeals under him, shifting into her gangly, half-grown cheetah shape and baring short fangs at him as she unsuccessfully tries to wiggle away. He can hold her with one paw.

_“You cheat!”_ she hisses. _“Where is the honour in striking when my back is turned? You dog!”_

He taps his nose affectionately against hers, wrinkling his whiskers in a human smirk. _“Do not turn your back, and I will not have the chance to strike.”_

 

* * *

 

Tali is ten and so beautiful it burns, even with her nose leaking snot and her eyes red-rimmed from tears. Ari crouches and examines the dead bird in her hands carefully, its neck held at a grotesque angle. His baby sister, so easily hurt by this world. It stings him to fail to protect her like this. “They hurt the bird to tease me,” Tali says, her mouth quivering and eyes horrified. “Why would they do that? I would _never_ have hurt the bird, yet they call me an animal.”

“They fear us because they don’t understand us,” he tells her, taking the bird gently from her hands. “But you know that you are the better person. The bird died because of them, not you.”

“Will they ever understand us?” she asks with such innocence he can’t help but smile even as his heart twists.

But he can’t lie. “No. It is not in their nature to understand. Come with me, we will bury your friend with honour.” She nods and twines her arm around his, tears already drying with the distraction of a grand funeral to plan.

If only all her problems could be so easy to solve. That would make his job as brother much easier. Easier to protect her, easier to bring that smile back.

That’s what elder brothers are for, after all. To protect the ones that come after them.

 

* * *

 

Ziva has grown since he has seen her last, before leaving Israel to study abroad. She’s a woman now, tall and cold. A stranger.

They’re at a crossroads. They walk separate paths after this.

“Little cat,” he greets her, and she turns to face him with a face shattered by grief.

“Ari,” she murmurs. There’s a pause where they relearn each other’s scents, always cautious, before she folds into his arms and doesn’t cry. Does she still know how? Sometimes, he wonders. He holds her close, feeling her heart beat against his for the first time in years and looking down at the grave that holds their beautiful Tali, killed by human bombs. He closes his eyes against the sight.

“She was the best of us,” he whispers into Ziva’s hair, feeling her breath hiss against his shoulder. She pulls away and shifts, revealing the predator in her, the assassin that their father has always wanted her to be. It saddens him. He had hoped his sisters would escape his fate, to become a weapon wielded by their sire. For the smallest amount of time, it had seemed they would.

Tali’s death has changed that.

The cheetah stands over the grave, eyes wild and fur raised in a furious ridge along her spine. _“They will pay,”_ she promises him, before vanishing in a single fluid movement.

He doesn’t chase her. There’s no point. He’s never been able to catch her when she decides to run.

 

* * *

 

_“Murderer!”_ Ari snarls, muscles bunching as he leaps at his sire, intent upon grievous harm. The larger cat easily knocks him back, sending him sprawling with his chin tucked tight to protect his throat.

_“I did not kill your mother, Ari,”_ his father pleads, his eyes wretched. _“My son, please. I did not realise that she was there when the order for the missile strikes came through. She was not supposed to be there!”_

_“You did it so I would become your little tame Mossad, collared and chained like a house pet!”_ Ari roars. He can hear shouting, the staff in his father’s home scurrying about like panicked field mice at the sound of his fury. _“You took her from me, so I would have no choice but to cry home to you! You want me in your control, just like Tali was. Just like Ziva!”_

There’s a startled hiss behind him and Ari draws back, turning around with shock dislodging his anger. He’s never been snuck up on before. He’s the quiet one, the stealthy one. Always the one to sneak cookies from the barrel or to hide bugs in his sisters’ bed.

Ziva has always excelled at getting away rather than avoiding being caught.

Except for now. She stands behind him with hurt eyes, ears flat against her skull and tail low. _“You think me a pet?”_ she says, pain and anger colouring her voice. _“Perhaps you could do with some control!”_ He doesn’t avoid the swipe she throws at him, much to her surprise, letting her claws slice over his cheek and leave shallow furrows of red. She reels back, startled that she’d landed a hit on him, guilty.

He leaves without another word. There’s no family here for him anymore.

No one holds his leash now.

 

* * *

 

This is still the before, but closer to the now. Ari hunts because he can.

He hunts because he hates.

Special Agent Caitlin Todd. Now this is a woman he can understand, for all her faults.

“Doctor Mallard thinks you were daring me to pick up this knife,” she taunts him on this fateful day in NCIS’s autopsy, and there’s a spirit to her eyes that attracts him even as he’s repelled by her humanness. Humans destroyed his pride. Humans destroyed his family.

Humans killed Tali.

He moves in closer, scenting her, and feels a thrill of satisfaction at the fear she doesn’t try to hide. She knows her place. Humans should fear him. They _are_ the hunted.

“The proper term is a dissecting tool,” he corrects her, softly nostalgic over the familiar term. Before Tali’s death, before his mother’s murder. Back when things were simple and perhaps he’d had a little more faith in the world. Now, he only has faith in a world where humans aren’t a part of it. Even this human.

Maybe, especially this human. Any woman who inspires weakness in him must fall.

“Perhaps you should give me a go,” says the doctor, moving forward with barely concealed hunger in his eyes. And isn’t that a surprise: a kelpie dressed as a mild mannered medical examiner. The world has indeed gone mad. He wonders if the American NCIS understand what a formidable creature they have playing doctor in their autopsy room, what a weapon.

He takes the kelpie’s scent too, storing it in his memory so he will always be able to find him. His kind never forgets a scent, not when hunting. He purrs, without letting his eyes leave Caitlin’s, “Oh, I think not, Doctor. You would kill me without hesitation. It is after all, in your nature, is it not?” There’s salt in the air and the pervading sense of a barely contained violence, wild and old. Their bodies are close enough that when Caitlin shivers slightly, he can feel it.

Oh yes. She should be afraid. It’s in this moment that he knows he plans to kill her.

 

* * *

 

He’s almost sorry as his bullet takes her life, her body falling like so much meat. Everything that makes her Caitlin, gone in an instant.

Just like Tali.

But he doesn’t really regret it. She’s another foot soldier in a war against the human’s stranglehold on a world where they’re obsolete. Despite this, the only satisfaction he gets from the kill is Gibbs’ tortured cry as his pack-mate is torn from him. It’s intoxicating, a shrill howl that Ari pauses to listen to.

For a moment, just a moment, he holds the vampire in his crosshairs and delights in the sight of the arrogant DiNozzo reeling and splattered with his partner’s blood. So viciously tempted to pull the trigger, to hear that howl turn broken, to leaves Gibbs alone on that rooftop. One less demon.

But he reconsiders, and lets the vampire live. He’d rather that that be a kill he can taste.

 

* * *

 

He’s a creature built for stealth and power, delivering his final blow as a crushing bite to the spinal column. A creature of power, grace, being hunted like a fox flushed by hounds and driven through the woods in a wild chase.

It’s almost insulting.

The wolves have endless stamina. Every time he manages to slip their trace and gain some ground in a burst of energy, they relentlessly pace him with their steady, ground-eating lope. His breath catches in his throat, sides heaving and rosette-marked fur slick with foamy sweat. He knows he can’t keep this up for much longer before they pull him down and overrun him like ants on a bug.

A familiar scent drifts into his flaring nostrils, and he raises exhausted eyes to the cheetah perched on the tree above, studying him. _“Little cat,”_ he greets her wryly, vividly aware of the wolves closing in. Led by Gibbs and the FBI hound, no doubt. Another one who has deftly avoided every trap set for him.

_“I don’t want to lose you,”_ Ziva replies, and the sound of her desperation has his lips curling. No one makes his sister sound like that, especially not an American dog. _“But if you really did kill Agent Todd, I will let them take you.”_

That is much more like her. _“They will bleed me like a pig if they catch me.”_

_“Did you kill her?”_

He’s always been the best liar out of them: Tali too innocent, Ziva too honourable. And he can see it now, as hateful as the notion is; Ziva’s honour will draw her to a man like Gibbs, he can see it in her eyes. It only inspires him to live, to survive this hunt. To kill Gibbs before he can sully Ari’s sister with his sick intent to betray his kind and protect humans. _“No. I give you my word.”_

Of course, he’s believed. Love makes weaklings of us all. She stands aside and allows him passage. _“Shalom, Ari,”_ she says quietly as he slides past, and he knows the wolves won’t follow him.

_“Shalom, Ziva.”_

It serves Gibbs right, really. Why side with humans when it was humans that had killed his family?

Ari’s almost doing him a favour.

 

* * *

 

It is perhaps appropriate that the bullet that ends his life comes from Ziva’s weapon. He’d known from the moment he’d first seen her at Gibbs’s side that that would be the place she stayed. The man is too much like their father, and Ziva has always loved their father. And, as once before, she’s struck Ari in favour of another man she loves more.

The bullet hurts but dying doesn’t. They’re in Gibbs’ basement, a trap set and sprung. Ari had been a fool to come here. It makes his death palatable. Fools die; that’s how the world works.

He raises his head weakly, Gibbs standing back with peaked ears and scenting the air to be sure the shot is true. It is. They can all smell his death approaching, staining this dusty floor with scarlet. Ziva walks to him, crouched, human. He hates to see her in that human skin, trapped. She’s so much more. _“Blood calls to blood,”_ he says, knowing that she can’t hear him.

She lays a hand on his fur, eyes damp, but she doesn’t cry. Ziva doesn’t cry, not even when killing her brother. “You killed Kate,” she tells him. A little startling to realise that she’d never believed him. “But I could not let them take you. I knew the moment you lied to me in the woods.”

He’s underestimated her. _“My little cat,”_ he says with pride. There are no more words. He dies to the sound of her singing, Gibbs’s eyes never leaving his.

And he wakes on a foggy path, with Caitlin there waiting.

 

* * *

 

This is the now.

Gibbs had thought it would be satisfying to watch Ari die, even if it couldn’t be his teeth that had done it. He should have remembered that revenge is very rarely satisfying.

At least his team is safe now.

David steps down slowly into his basement and walks over to the dying leopard, putting her weapon aside. Gibbs stands in wolf form, a silent watcher. He’d been ready to kill the man he’s hated like very few others but recognises that this is no longer his moment.

Ari raises his head and looks at her. _“Blood calls to blood,”_ he sends weakly. Gibbs blinks, startled. David can’t hear the soft words, still in human form, but he can, barely.

And he watches as David lays a careful hand on the leopard’s fur, over his heart. Her face is tilted away from Gibbs, but the taste of salt in the air is on his tongue. “You killed Kate. But I could not let them take you. I knew the moment you lied to me in the woods.”

Ah, Gibbs realises. He lowers his head.

_“My little cat,”_ are Ari’s last words before his body goes still and quiet. Gibbs can hear pride in his tone, and love. Things he hadn’t believed Ari Haswari capable of.

“My half-brother,” David says quietly, an explanation he doesn’t feel he deserves. She seems to fold into herself for a moment, form shrinking dramatically. The cheetah she becomes is petite, barely standing waist height to a human. It’s a stark juxtaposition to the heavily muscled leopard that she taps her muzzle against in a silent farewell. Gibbs quietly wonders how many other ways David differs from her family, and if it’s enough.

Her voice is unfamiliar in her shifted form, hard for him to hear. He stands with her anyway as she sings her brother to rest until the sound of DiNozzo’s feet on the floorboards above breaks the hushed spell.

By the time the basement door opens, they’re both human again and there’s no sign of grief on her face.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t expect to see David again, but a month later he walks into the bullpen and finds her sitting at Kate’s desk and DiNozzo all but frothing at the mouth with territorial possessiveness.

“What are you doing here?”

She jumps and her mouth twists, looking perturbed. DiNozzo’s face is delighted in a way that it hasn’t been since Kate died, the look that means he’s just proved someone wrong.

“Looking forward to being a member of your team,” she says, and Gibbs tenses. He worked with her to take down Ari—is that not enough for Jenny and her insistence on pushing his buttons? David hesitates and her posture stiffens as though cornered. “I stand corrected. It appears he did not know. I feel like a donkey’s butt.”

“A donkey’s butt?” McGee chips in curiously.

Tony snorts. “I think she meant ‘horse’s ass’, McGee.”

Gibbs turns and strides out with dark intent to the director’s office, planning to explain to her the meaning of the word ‘temporary.’ David catches him at the stairs, calling his name softly. He doesn’t mean to whirl on her like he does, eyes furious, but he’s not ready to replace Kate yet. A small voice tells him that this has to happen eventually, that he can’t avoid it forever, but does it have to happen with the sister of the man who’d killed her?

Another small part, one that sounds remarkably like Ducky, points out that part of his problem is because she’s a woman, and he has a track record of failing them. That one is scolding.

“You do not trust me?” David asks him. It’s impossible to understand why she surprised.

“I don’t know you,” he says shortly, and walks away.

 

* * *

 

And, in the end, he caves.

Kate would have been the first to admit when she was wrong, at least where DiNozzo isn’t concerned. Gibbs can learn from that. The lights in the bullpen are dull and he looks up to find David standing in front of him, her scent nervous. She holds something out to him, twitching as he takes it. Instincts die hard.

It’s Kate’s sketchbook.

“She is gone. But I think she would have wanted you to have this.”

Gibbs flicks though it, heart twisting at the familiar sketches. “You gonna be able to work under me?” he asks finally, voice gruffer than intended.

She smiles. Much like many of her other expressions, it’s hard for him to read. Communication falters between the wolf and the cat. “I have worked under worse. Goodnight, Gibbs… see you in the morning.”

And she leaves him sitting there, his hand resting on a pencil sketch of his own face over the shape of a wolf. He wonders.

Maybe having Ziva David on the team won’t be such a bad idea. They’ve done wilder.

What can go wrong?


	3. Ziva and the Team

DiNozzo peers over the side of the steep slope with a cocky grin that grates at Ziva’s nerves. She has only been working with the man for two weeks, and already she is finding it hard to understand how he ever made it to Special Agent status. She also finds it odd that the American government allows a vampire to work for them, although no one else seems to find it strange. At home, vampires are executed on sight, as is the way in many countries… not that DiNozzo seems to pose much of a threat to anyone.

“Well, Zee-vah,” he says, looking back up at her with his eyes glinting unpleasantly. She wonders how many others can see that the humanity in them is a mask over the demon underneath. “You’d better get climbing. At least one of us needs to make it down with the body, or Ducky is going to have kittens.”

She stares at him. “Down there? You want me to climb down there?”

McGee sidles up, keeping a fair distance from the edge of the drop, and swallows nervously. Ziva can hear his breath quickening at the thought of the climb. A clay-man afraid of heights. How odd.

“I can go?” he offers, voice cracking. DiNozzo seems torn between the desire to continue hazing the ‘new girl’ and his old duty to the ‘probie’. Ziva is pretty sure that she is never going to understand American customs or, at least, DiNozzo customs.

“I will go,” she says, attempting a smile at McGee. He pulls back and she drops the smile quickly, sensing that she unnerves him. “It is a simple climb for me. A slice of cake.”

“Piece of cake,” DiNozzo corrects. She can hear Gibbs making his careful, silent way through the undergrowth towards them, hers the only hearing sharp enough to pick up on his approach. “Now, you’ll want to go carefully, there’s a game trail over here that will—”

Perhaps her eagerness in this case will help him accept her into their team. She ignores DiNozzo’s instructions, dropping swiftly into her feline form and slipping over the edge of the plunge. McGee’s startled yelp follows her, and DiNozzo makes a furious noise of dismay. She is right though, it is a ‘piece of cake.’ Her four paws manage what her co-workers’ two cannot, and even Gibbs in his canine form could come to grief on this loose shingle. She sniffs around the body when she reaches it, without disturbing the scene, before sitting and waiting for the extraction team to arrive. Maybe after this, Gibbs might actually trust her to be a functional member of his unit.

_And maybe wolves will grow wings and fly_ , she huffs to herself, flicking her tail irritably.

The peace of the woodlands around her is broken only by the faint sounds of her team and the local police force blundering about on the ridge above. Even the body does not unsettle her much, it being in relatively respectable condition considering the bullet hole in its chest and the tumble down the scree it had taken. A frantic flapping of wings breaks her concentration and she tenses with her claws ready as a shadow dips overhead. The autopsy assistant appears and lands clumsily on the side of a tree trunk, wings outstretched to stop from overbalancing and falling off. She watches with interest, having never seen a gremlin fly before. It is as ungainly as she had always imagined a human, even in miniature, given wings would be.

“I think you might have scared Tony,” he comments, folding his wings in tightly and angling his head to examine the corpse. “I mean, err… you um, startled him. Because he’s being very shouty up there. I thought I should warn you.”

_“He is probably just sore that I did not fall down the slope,”_ she sends grumpily, aware that the gremlin cannot hear her. _“He is a bad loser.”_

_“Sore loser, David,”_ replies a gruff voice, and she looks up to the wolf making his careful way down the slippery incline, zig-zagging back and forth to avoid the loosest sections. _“What do we have?”_

She straightens and reports on the body concisely, aware of Gibb’s grim regard. When she is done, he nods once and replies with a simple, _“Good work.”_

The warm feeling in her chest is new, and not entirely unwelcome.

 

* * *

 

The sky outside is dim with oncoming night as Ziva finishes off her final report and slides it onto Gibbs’ desk. The bullpen is quiet except for a few other agents finishing up their own paperwork, and she takes a moment to look around. A bright patch of colour on the partition next to DiNozzo’s desk catches her eye and she wanders over to examine it. Photos of people all momentarily frozen by the camera are pinned there, a range of emotions and facial expressions displayed. Ziva can see the NCIS personnel among the strangers. She had not realised DiNozzo was so… human.

One of the photos is dog-eared and creased from being handled over and over, multiple pinholes marring the top. She reaches out and pulls it from the board, examining the picture.

Caitlin Todd, the woman she has replaced.

“She was beautiful.,” she says quietly, aware of the soft approach behind her. “You must all miss her very much.”

The approach ceases.

“We do,” Abby replies, voice tight with the effort of containing emotion. There is a distance between them that Ziva does not know how to breach, barred by Kate and the team’s grief over her.

_I cannot be her, but I can be your friend,_ Ziva wants to say, but it has been a long time since Ziva was a friend to anyone and she is not sure she remembers how. “I am sorry for your loss, Abby,” she says instead. In reply, Abby just nods and walks away, eyes averted.

Ziva makes sure to pin the photo back exactly how she had found it, as though she has never been there at all.

 

* * *

 

She slips up once and, when it happens, she can see the downfall of everything she has been working towards. McGee is working busily on his computer when she gets into work, and she is amazed to see the other three computers in the bullpen with data and lines of code scrolling across the screens. “Are you controlling all of them?” she asks, watching the browser open without his physical input.

McGee does not look up from his work, but he smiles proudly. “Yeah. I’m helping move all the old paper records into digital databanks and sorting them. It’s quicker with multiple data points. It’s nothing difficult, just tedious.”

She is impressed nonetheless, and it is the first connection she has made with the introverted clay-man. “It is very clever,” she remarks. “Your maester must be very proud of your work.”

The program stops suddenly, as though he has lost focus. When she looks up, his expression is tense. “I don’t have a master, I’m not a slave,” he says with a voice that shakes. She realises that she has grievously mis-stepped.

“Tim, I am sorry,” she apologizes, but the damage is done. Her intentions had not been cruel. It is different where she comes from, and she could explain that there clay-men are just soulless automatons, and she had not been expecting to find a free man with the _shem_ etched onto the back of his neck. But, somehow, she does not think it will help. She could tell him that it is different in her home country, but not better. This freedom he has been given is how it should be. Maybe that _would_ help. Instead, she quietly works on her own paperwork until everyone else arrives, vividly aware of the simmering anger aimed at her from the other desk.

It is very lonely, being a team of one.

 

* * *

 

“Gibbs, I’m a forensics witch, not a miracle worker. Do you have any idea what beyond smithereens means?” Abby looks tired, eyes red-ringed under her make-up, and Ziva feels compassion for her faced against the thoroughly unsympathetic Gibbs.

“Nope, except put it back together,” Gibbs barks, shoving the briefcase the bomb-squad had detonated back at her and stalking off.

“This is going to take a month,” Abby says sadly, looking down at the shambles in front of her. Ziva steps forward, feeling the witch’s gaze snap up to her and regard her darkly.

“Would you like some help?”

Abby’s face twitches, as though she is not entirely sure how to respond. “Do you have a degree in forensic science?” she asks. It lacks the bite she had clearly intended upon delivering.

“No,” Ziva replies, picking up the box of evidence and moving quickly towards the elevator to the lab. “But I am very good at puzzles.”

When Abby races to catch up and joins her in the elevator, she is smiling.

It is a start.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s Tony and Gibbs?” Abby asks one day, bouncing into the bullpen with her bag on one arm and skirt alive with what looked like a photo-realistic interpretation of the solar system, complete with comets leaving long tails as they whiz about.

“Looking into a case for the director,” Ziva says. Her attention is completely taken up by watching two glittery comets collide into a shower of smaller rock.

“Okay, good, well you two are it then!” Abby announces. There is a yelp as she drags McGee out his seat by one arm. “Lunch is on me.”

Ever since Ziva had spent an exhausting ten hours helping Abby with the tedious task, she seems to have made it her own personal duty to help her assimilate into the team. Lunches with McGee and DiNozzo are her latest attempt. Although, Ziva is sure that if she never has to watch DiNozzo inhale an entire shoal of small baked fish in one mouthful again, she can die a happy woman.

“You guys need to hear about this guy I was dating,” Abby chatters as the two field agents reluctantly trail after her to the elevator. “I mean, oh man, the guy was into things that even I thought were creepy.”

“I can’t imagine what would have been too creepy for you. Perhaps he slept in a coffin?” At Ziva’s query, McGee starts laughing. Ziva eyes him, confused. Did she say something strange?

 

* * *

 

“There’s a spriggan in my lab,” Abby announces accusingly as she bursts into the bullpen, glaring at Gibbs. “Why is there a spriggan in my lab?’

Gibbs blinks slowly and leans back in his chair, mouth twitching. “I don’t know, Abs. Why is there a spriggan in your lab?”

“What’s a spriggan?” Ziva asks.

“Creepy tree pixie,” Abby grumbles, barely even taking a breath before launching into a furious tirade. “I work better alone, Gibbs, I don’t need an assistant. Who said I need an assistant? No, tell me, and I’ll show them how much assisting I need! I especially don’t need an assistant made of wood. Wood, Gibbs! Do you know how many times I’ve accidentally set things on fire in my life? Well, I don’t either, but it’s a lot. And don’t take that as a reason why I need an assistant.”

The sudden silence as she finally stops to breathe is awkward as they all stare speechlessly at her. “You have an assistant?” DiNozzo finally asks, looking intrigued.

Abby whirls on him. “Yes, Tony, haven’t you been listening? Do you want to know the worst thing? Do you?”

DiNozzo nods, eyes wide.

“I’m pretty sure he’s geekier than Tim,” she says sullenly. “But without all of his fun. _He’s boring._ ”

“There are worse things than being boring,” Ziva says, thinking of some of the people she has worked with in the past.

When Abby replies, her voice is incredulous. “I really, really doubt that.”

 

* * *

 

“Director Shepard.” Ziva greets her superior politely as she walks across the sweeping lawn towards her. The therian park is quiet except for a small family clustered together by the tree line as the parents work together to wrestle identification tags on their three children. Ziva watches them with interest as the smallest child shifts into a gangly wolf-pup and slips out of his mother’s frustrated grasp.

“Ziva,” Shepard says, face lighting up. Her assistant is nearby, eyeing the area carefully. “I’m so glad you could join us. It’s not often I get the chance to come out here, and I thought you could use the company.”

Ziva hesitates, still unsure of how to act around the other woman. “I normally run alone,” she says eventually.

The director’s smile does not slip as she laughs. “You know, we’ve got a lot of people at NCIS who are insistent that they ‘work better alone.’ But when it comes down to it, they don’t really. Our strengths lie in each other.”

Ziva does not really know how to answer that, but her conundrum is solved by Shepard slipping easily into her shapeshifted form, waiting a beat for Ziva to join her before trotting towards the woods. Cynthia follows seconds after, white hare tail bobbing as she runs to keep up.

_“And please, outside of work, call me Jenny,”_ Shepard says cheerily. _“I think we can abstain from formalities on four legs, don’t you?”_

Ziva regards the small fox before nodding, the gesture strange on a feline neck. _“Of course… Jenny.”_

It occurs to her as she slowly lopes after the smaller shifters that she is not the only lonely one at NCIS.

She wonders if that will ever change.


	4. Gibbs and the Gello

Cases are infinitely worse when they involve children. This one looks to be one of the worst.

It begins like this:

“Gibbs!” Jenny’s voice is high and worried as she takes the stairs at an obscene pace.

“Director?” Gibbs questions, looking up and frowning at the look on her face. “Problem?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ziva’s typing slow as she indirectly listens to their conversation.

Jenny stops in front of his desk, and he can see from her expression what she’s going to say before she says it. “It’s Navy now,” she says, eyes dark with anger and worry. “We’ve got a six year old therian just called us, says his father and his father’s friend, along with his two children, were just kidnapped from a fairground. He managed to slip away and is there alone now.”

“He’s six and managed to escape from professional kidnappers?” DiNozzo asks, none of them even pretending not to be listening anymore as they reach for their gear. “Smart kid.”

Gibbs skim-reads the report, eyeing the location and the transcript of the child, Zach’s, panicked phone call. It’s not good. “He’ll be a dead kid if we don’t hurry, DiNozzo. Move, now.”

Speed is integral.

Jenny watches them as they leave the bullpen, and Gibbs knows if he looks back to meet her gaze, he’ll see uneasiness in her eyes. Whatever this is, these missing cases, it’s getting way too close for comfort.

 

* * *

 

Zach Tanner is quiet, scared, and alone. All he has left in the world is his father, and there are no leads to finding him. The man has vanished off the face of the earth, taking with him the only other three people in the world who care about the youngest Tanner. Gibbs can’t help but ache when he looks at him, the sight of the huddled ball of fur that was the dog-form Zach in the security booth something that will haunt him for weeks to come. It takes the combined efforts of Abby and Ducky to get him to shift back into human form and start answering questions.

They receive the call three hours after picking up the frightened child.

“They’ve found a body,” DiNozzo says, putting the phone into the cradle and meeting Gibbs’ gaze with a furrowed brow. “Five miles from the fairground, it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“They got an identification?” Gibbs asks, only half wanting an answer.

DiNozzo shakes his head, and they gear up with heavy hearts, none of them expecting easy answers.

Easy is not what they find.

McGee turns green when he sees the remains. DiNozzo is impassive. Gibbs clenches his teeth, stomach twisting, making sure to show no outward sign of his dismay. Ziva doesn’t react, just narrows her eyes and paces around the body, examining it carefully. He wonders what that says about her.

“It’s not Tanner,” McGee says, glancing at the mangled face and looking away quickly. “Tanner was taller. It’s the other dad.”

“Tanner _is_ taller,” Gibbs corrects him. “He’s not dead yet.” The _yet_ hangs in the air like a mist, clouding their moods oppressively. Silently, DiNozzo begins to take photos. Ziva offers to help, receiving a brusque brush-off in return. Tension ripples through Gibbs’ team, amplified by the gruesomeness of the crime-scene. “David, check the surrounding area. See if you can pick up any scents on who dropped him here.” He waits until she’s gone before pacing up behind DiNozzo and letting his feet fall heavily as a warning.

“Something on your mind, Boss? I mean, aside from these sick bastards.”

“Accepting Ziva doesn’t mean letting go of Kate,” Gibbs says. A blank mask falls over DiNozzo’s face at the mention of their fallen friend. “I need a team, DiNozzo, not three people working separately.”

“Understood, Boss.” DiNozzo’s voice is clipped, but there’s acceptance in his expression. Gibbs nods and leaves to skirt the roadways. If they’re going to solve this and bring the kids home, bring Zach’s dad home, they need to work together.

 

* * *

 

Ziva is terrible with women, worse with men, and all around terrible at taking witness statements. Yet, somehow, it comes as no surprise to Gibbs that she’s actually pretty good with kids. “Do you remember anything about what happened at the park?” she asks Zach, leaning forward to get a look at the paper he’s miserably running a pencil over.

Zach answers in short sentences, his expression glum. Hitting the end of his patience with the endless questioning. “There were two men there. Dad was talking to them. He gave us the sign to run. I don’t know what happened next.” The pencil he’s pushing against the paper leaves a long, dark mark as he bites at his lip. “Alec and Noel were behind me, and then they weren’t.”

Ziva’s eyes flicker up to meet Gibbs’ gaze. “You have a signal to run? Your father taught you one?”

The boy looks confused. “Yeah, of course. In case the Gello comes. Don’t you?”

“Gello?” McGee asks from behind Gibbs. “What’s that?”

“Therian nursery rhyme,” Tony answers. “You must be gay, or the Gello will take you away.”

“Her trap will catch foot or paw, unless you follow elder law,” Gibbs adds, seeing Tony’s eyebrows lift, despite the fact that he shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a shapeshifter rhyme, with variants among Garou and therians, but of course he knows it. Kelly had been terrified of the ‘Gello’, Shannon banning any mention of it from their house.

“Didn’t know you were into make believe, Gibbs.”

Gibbs snorts. “Yeah, well, bit different when they stop being pretend.”

 

* * *

 

“What have we got, Duck?”

Ducky straightens from where he’s hunched over the corpse of civilian Jerry Hicks, the commander’s friend and Zach’s godfather. His gaze, when it meets Gibbs’, is as troubled as Gibbs has ever seen it, and his bells are muted. “A problem, Jethro. A terrible problem indeed. Our friend here died in agony.”

“He was mauled.” Gibbs knows what it looks like when something is pulled down by a pack of animals. He’s lived it, more than once. But no wolf pack has ever torn something down with this much savagery, at least not one that Gibbs had ever run with.

“Indeed. Look here…” Ducky turns the body, gloved finger pointing to long, jagged tears along the man’s back and neck. “He was shifted when he was injured. When he died, he shifted back, tearing all the wounds.”

“Like pulling on a wet paper bag,” Palmer adds, looking fascinated. “Dreadful.”

“Yes Mr. Palmer, dreadful for his family who are still out there in the hands of these monsters, and yet you stand here making crass analogies.” Ducky aims a fierce glare at his assistant, who wilts. Gibbs’ gut starts churning. Hicks’ neck is ringed by neat puncture marks, far too neat for teeth or claw. That’s a horribly familiar sight.

“Yes, you recognise it too,” Ducky says. “A binding collar was placed on this man, Jethro. Bound in his animal shape.”

Damn. That really means only one thing: slavers.

“Lots of money to be made on a therian fighting ring,” he says, bile burning the back of his throat as vivid memories of the videos and pictures they’ve all been shown of the practise rises in his mind.

“Well, that’s the odd thing.” Ducky lowers the body with a perturbed expression. “There’s a lot of money to be made on therians on the black market, alive or dead. Even in the state this poor fellow is in, he’s still worth a fortune on the silk road. Why would they leave his body for us to find? They could have been operating for years without us finding solid evidence to link them to the disappearances.”

“It’s a threat, Duck. A message.”

Palmer coughs, eyes widening. “Look what we can do,” he murmurs, gaze locked on the body of the man. “Look what we can do, and you can’t stop us.”

Gibbs glares at him for that last bit. Like hell they can’t.

 

* * *

 

The air in the attic is stale, filling Gibbs’ mouth with dust and his mind with memories. He coughs to clear them both away, avoiding the desire to shake as though to clear debris from his fur. The box he’s looking for is right at the back, small and non-descript. When he opens it, his hands hover over the colourful illustrations of the picture books reluctantly. Finally, he shuffles through, looking for one particular book out of the bright jumble. It’s down the bottom, one of the first to have been hidden away back when Shannon was still around to disapprove of his choice of reading material to their daughter. Back when Kelly was still around to hear him read the old rhymes.

He reads it and misses them keenly.

_You must be good, you must be gay_

_Lest the Gello come take you away_

_Her trap will catch you by the paw_

_Unless you follow elder law_

_Run away, run away, you’ll be caught_

_you’ll be fraught_

_When the Gello comes,_

_it’s far too late_

_Your heart will rend and rule with hate_

_And when you are dead_

_Your fur now red_

_We all now dread_

_Your name_

_Poor you! Poor you!_

Gibbs closes the book and weighs it in his hand, thoughtfully. A myth. Just a myth.

But, when he leaves, he takes it with him.

 

* * *

 

Zach is quiet that night, fiddling with the block of sandpaper Gibbs has given him. “At this rate, we’ll have her seaworthy in no time,” Gibbs teases, seeing the downward curve of the boy’s mouth.

He looks up with dull brown eyes, every bit the lost pup he’d been when they picked him up. “My dad would have loved to help with this,” he says mournfully, with the eyes of a much older man.

“Maybe he will. We’ll find him, Zach.”

Before he’s finished talking, the kid is already shaking his head. “You don’t come back when the Gello gets you. She takes you away and makes you angry, then you die.”

“You said it was men who took your dad and friends. It’s a fairy-tale, kid. Just something moms made up years and years ago to make their kids behave.”

“But it could be real, you don’t know.” Zach’s face is stubborn in his surety.

There’s the click of a heel by the door. “You’d do well to believe Agent Gibbs, Zach,” says a cheerful voice from the stairway. “He knows all about monsters.”

Gibbs straightens. “Jenny. Dinner at the White House?” Her long gown shimmers in the uneven light of his basement, sorely out of place.

“A date, actually. Would you be able to give us a minute, Zach?” Her eyes turn grim, and Gibbs knows what’s coming. Zach nods and bolts upstairs to get a soda, skirting carefully around Jenny to avoid getting wood dust on her dress. “We have to face the possibility we’re not going to find the commander, Gibbs,” Jenny says in a low voice as soon as the door bangs shut behind the kid. “We need to make arrangements for Zach.”

“We’ll find him.” Gibbs is determined they will. What bullshit is it to give up now, when the man is barely even a day gone?

Her mouth twists unhappily. “We haven’t found any of them yet. Not one, and there’s over two hundred over the country missing in the same circumstances.”

Gibbs opens his mouth to reply but a scream from the kitchen cuts him off, right as the walls of the basement explode into flickering webs of light. Snarls and shrieks can be heard, his security spells attempting to defend the home. But, even as they flare, they begin to burn out, their power source being leeched from elsewhere. Gibbs hurtles up the stairs, feet barely touching the wood as he shifts and bursts through the door, roaring. He hears snarls behind him—Jenny following suit in her small, but still vicious, fox form.

Zach scoots towards him, slipping through a pool of spilled soda and shifting into his dog form. Behind him, three men with magic flaring about their hands loom, summoned shadow sprites lunging for the boy’s unprotected back. Gibbs leaps over Zach, feeling spells splatter and fizz over his fur as the mages attempted to defend themselves. Their attempts to subdue him are laughable, his werewolf hide resistant to their piss-weak curses. One falls under his jaws, bones splintering as teeth sinks into the soft flesh. He whirls, seeing Jenny snapping at the legs of the wavering forms of the shadow sprites, dancing about to avoid their retaliating attacks.

_“There’s more coming!”_ she cries, seconds before a glittering spell net covers her. _“Jethro!”_

_“Dad!”_ screams Zach, one of the mages grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Mouth held wide, Gibbs rears but, before he can seize the boy back, he’s thrown off his paws by an impact of heat and pain to his side that sends him sprawling.

The last thing he remembers is the rending agony of iron on his skin.


	5. Tim and the Innocent Man

He’s tapping idly at his typewriter when the phone rings, shattering his concentration. As it is, the case has been playing on his mind all night, mental images of the two missing children shivering in cages and missing their dad haunting him. A quick glance at the screen of his phone raises new questions. Why is Ziva calling him?

“Ziva,” he answers. “Did something happen with the case?”

“You need to come here, to Gibbs’ home,” Ziva replies shortly. McGee can hear a commotion in the background, people talking and shouting over each other and the sound of a fierce argument. “I fear for Tony.”

“What happened to Tony?”

“Nothing, yet.” Ziva’s tone is impossible to interpret; he can’t work out what she’s feeling over the crackly line. “But Gibbs and the director have been taken, and Tony is about to be arrested.”

McGee is pretty sure he misheard that last bit. “Arrested for taking Gibbs? Taking Gibbs where?” Even as he talks, he’s reaching for his wallet and keys.

“No, he is going to be arrested for killing the FBI agents who will not let us into Gibbs’ house.”

Tim’s pretty sure this conversation isn’t going to get any less cryptic and decides to just ask Tony when he gets there.

 

* * *

 

Tim gets out his car and finds himself weaving through swarms of grim looking men and women, an impressive range of acronyms splashed across all their uniforms. He spots Ziva prowling by the edge of a heavily guarded crime scene tape, looking irritated by their refusal to let her through.

“What happened?” he pants when he reaches her. When she tilts her head around to look at him, he realises he’s wrong. There’s the faintest hint of fear in her eyes, hidden behind the calm mask, and suddenly he feels wildly in over his head. He’s the probie, she’s two months green, and everyone he would normally look to for guidance isn’t here.

“There was an attack,” Ziva tells him. “They have taken the director, as well as Gibbs and the boy. The FBI will not let us in.”

“Tony?”

Ziva’s face flickers. “Indisposed.”

Anger flares, warring with a sick terror that’s building and threatening to overwhelm him. “What could he be doing that’s more important than getting us in there to find Gibbs?” Even Tony can’t possibly be that selfish, right? “He’d better have a damn good excuse—”

“He struck the man who told us we could not go in.”

Oh.

 

* * *

 

“It’s a goddamn alphabet of clowns,” Tony snaps, appearing behind Tim and Ziva as suddenly as though he’s been there all along. Tim jumps and almost falls back into the hedge, saved by Ziva’s quick arm. “Walking all over the crime scene, destroying evidence. If Gibbs was here…”

“He is not,” Ziva responds, looking Tony up and down. “You are. Why did they let you go?”

“Because you lot are our best bet at finding them,” another voice replies. Fornell is a few steps behind Tony, his cheek red and threatening to bruise.

“How are we going to help you find them?” Tim asks nervously, looking around at the people surrounding them all much more important than their odd collection of misfits. “You’ve got everyone here but NASA, all with more access and authority than us.”

Fornell lifts the tape and gestures with one hand. “Consider yourself granted access. We’ve got nothing on these guys.”

“Then how do you expect us to find them?” Ziva ducks under the tape rapidly, as though concerned Fornell will change his mind and face already twitching minutely as she tests all her senses on the air.

It’s Tony who answers. “Because they’ve got Gibbs, and there’s no one who knows him better than us.”

 

* * *

 

“Blood,” Ziva says, crouching near the smeared pool. “Gibbs’, and another.” She looks at the body of the man lying dead on Gibbs’ kitchen floor, his face blank and throat crushed and torn. The walls and floor of the room still smoke, charred and marked by misfired spells.

Tim doesn’t need to be a Tony-level investigator to get a bad feeling about this. “This isn’t their MO, they don’t make messes like this. They get in and out clean. Are we sure these are the same men who took Tanner?”

“You think clean was an option against a trained federal werewolf?” Fornell asks him. “They had to hit fast and hard, take him out before he could get to them. And they were ready to take losses, there’s nothing on the dead man we can use for identification. He’s a ghost.”

“No one saw them leave?” Tony’s voice is clipped, tone low. Tim sees a focused expression on his face more at home on Gibbs’. It’s oddly comforting, if a bit surreal. “They took three hostages, at least two of whom went down fighting, and no one saw them get in or out?”

Fornell shakes his head. “It’s like they vanished. Outside the house, nothing. No scent, no spell-trace, no nothing.”

“People don’t just vanish,” Tony snaps, fangs catching the light and glittering, an unspoken threat. “We don’t let them vanish.”

 

* * *

 

Heads turn to face them when they walk into the bullpen, Tim feeling small and insignificant next to the furious vampire’s towering presence. Tony disappears immediately, sprinting up the stairs to MTAC and leaving Ziva and Tim to face the rest of their team.

“Timothy, is what we’ve heard true?” Ducky says, standing from where he’s been sitting motionless at Gibbs’ desk, face pale. “Director Shepard? And Jethro?”

“And Zach,” Ziva says at the same time Tim nods affirmative. There’s a hint of tension in the corner of her mouth, emotion she’s firmly holding back. It’s uncomfortable to look at for long, and he turns his attention back to their team. Abby is sitting with her knees tucked to her chest in his chair, and he braces himself for a volley of frantic Abby-ness.

Instead, she looks at him with wide, green eyes and swallows hard. “What do we do?” she asks him. “How do we find Gibbs without… well, Gibbs?”

“We’re not officially on the case, we’re not supposed to be investigating this,” Tim points out. “We have no evidence, no body. It’s all with the FBI.”

There’s a dry snort next to him, and Ziva rolls her eyes. “Forgive me, I know I have only been here two months,” she says, “but I do not believe that Tony will be content to ‘step aside’ and let the FBI handle this.”

“Good thing we’re not stepping aside.” Fornell is as good as Gibbs at sneaking up on them, with only Ducky not jumping at his sudden appearance in the bullpen. “Miss Sciuto, Doctor Mallard, we have evidence for you. How fast can you process it?”

“We’ll have him home by dawn,” Ducky says with a strained smile.

 

* * *

 

“These guys are good,” Abby says when Tim walks into her lab holding a Caf-Pow, eyes locked on the screen waiting for results. “But _not_ good enough.”

“We found fingerprints,” Chip chimes in, appearing and staring unblinkingly at McGee. Tim fights off the childish desire to flick the drink over the creepy tree-pixie, chalking it up to the stresses of the last few hours. Although, when Tony gets back from wherever he’s vanished to, he’ll probably enjoy hearing that Tim has ‘slushied’ the unsettling forensics assistant.

“Yes, good, Chip, state the obvious. How about telling him the exciting bit?” Abby glares at her assistant, eyes narrowed. Even after weeks of the man being here, he still hasn’t grown on her.

“We found fingerprints good enough to get a match from on the body,” Chip adds slowly, voice unsure. “We’re running them against criminal records and mage IDs.”

Abby rolls her eyes again, harder this time. “We also found traces of an adhesive on his fingers, the same type Ducky got off of the body of Hicks earlier. And wait, there’s always more! Ducky just sent this up.” Sharp images of the skin around the dead man’s neck appear on the screen. Chip looks away from the photos quickly. Tim thinks that if the man had skin instead of waxy bark, he’d have turned green. He really is in the wrong career track.

“I’m looking at… what’s left of someone who pisses off Gibbs?” McGee tries, wondering how much bite force would have to be behind the jaws to do _that_ much damage so quickly.

Abby hits another key and the photos zoom in, showing an odd, circular wound just barely missed by the wolf’s fangs. “This is a bite mark. And not a Gibbs bite mark, this is a bite mark of a much different kind.” Abby smirks, looking like herself for the first time all day. “You know the best thing about vampires, Tim?”

“Tony?”

“Well, yes… and also that they’re legally required to update their dentals every year, in case of a sudden throat mauling. Which is good news for us, because this particular mark was left by one of the blood-loving kind, which gives us a _trail_. Which, we’re also running now, before you ask.”

“Why would he have a bite mark from a vampire?” Chip asks. “Was he attacked?”

Abby sniggers, eyes glittering. “Oh, Chip, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Abby looks to Tim to answer, and he can tell by her face that she knows exactly what she’s doing. His ears burn as Chip turns to look at him as well, still puzzled. “It’s, err… it’s a sex thing, Charles.” Chip blinks twice, and Tim is weirded out to realise the man has two eyelids over each bulbous eye. He just gets more unsettling by the minute, and that’s coming from a man made of clay. But Tim’s sure this is a thing unique to Chip, because he’s met other pixies that are nowhere near as Chippish as this one.

The computer screen dings and Abby’s giggles are stifled as she swings around with a crowing, “Result!”

The face on the screen looking back at them is the last one any of them expect and, for the second time that day, Tim feels completely out of his depth.

 

* * *

 

“Tony!” Tim sprints after the senior agent, anxiety racketing up another level when Tony whirls on him.

“Where have you been?” Tony hisses. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“Abby’s lab. We have a problem.” Tim is babbling, panicking, and he can see Ziva slowly standing from her desk to watch them with a concerned gaze. “A huge problem we need to talk about, right now.” Then, Abby is prattling right alongside him, and the air of alarm in the room is reaching critical levels. Tony withstands about a minute more of their clumsy attempts at convincing him of the importance of their mission before reaching up and head-slapping the both of them. McGee stares at him, oddly touched by the gesture even as his pulse hammers in his chest.

“We need to ask you something really, really personal and really, really, _really_ important,” Abby breathes, calming slightly as she rubs the back of her head with one hand. “Like, right now. In my lab, not here.”

“Like what?” Tony plants his feet firmly and narrows his eyes at them, refusing to be moved. “This isn’t the time to muck around guys, we’re running out of daylight—”

“Like why we just found your teeth marks on our body,” Tim whispers, seeing Ziva stiffen in shock nonetheless. The woman has ears like a… well, like a cat.

“I’d like to ask the same question, DiNutso,” says a taciturn voice from behind them. Tony is staring at Tim with a disconcerted expression, completely blindsided and paying no attention to Fornell’s slow, reluctant approach. Tim turns instead, feeling cold when he sees the grim men flanking Fornell, three pairs of eyes locked on the motionless Tony. “And how come we just found your fingerprints in an abandoned car, along with Gibbs’ DNA. His _blood_ , fresh.”

Tony doesn’t say a word as they lead him away, leaving Tim and Abby standing alone.

 

* * *

 

As soon as Tim steps into the morgue, Ducky seals the door behind him by hitting the contagious autopsy button. They’re locked in.

“Tony didn’t do this,” Abby says immediately, huddled next to Palmer and shaking with anger. “I don’t care what the evidence says, he would never hurt Gibbs.”

“How do we prove he didn’t?” Tim says, half to himself, mind spinning wildly.

“We find who did,” Ziva replies, her eyes flashing yellow.


	6. Abby and the Spriggan

“Is that a tiny hippo?” Ziva stares at Bert, her expression the closest to being startled that Abby’s ever seen. Abby spins on her stool to face her, trying to smirk at the shock and failing.

“His name is Bert,” she says instead, feeling her mouth determinedly stay downturned. Mojo completely gone, she can’t even pretend to smile anymore. How can she _smile_ when Gibbs is _gone?_ “I didn’t want him to be alone at home.”

Too many of her family are alone at the moment.

“Tony does not want us to focus on him,” Ziva says, turning her head to watch Chip stumble in through the door dragging a roll of carpeting. At least he’s good for something. “He says that Gibbs is in much more immediate danger and must be the priority of our investigation.”

“What investigation?” Chip drops the carpet and looks from Abby to Ziva. “We don’t have any investigations at the moment. None of us who have contact with Agent DiNozzo are supposed to be working on any active cases until Internal Affairs clears us. It’s the rules.”

“Damn the rules, Chip!” Abby yells, rocketing to her feet. Why must he be so obnoxious!? “This is family, it comes before rules! Besides, why did you think I asked you to get the carpet from Tony’s car?”

Chip blinks a few times, slowly processing what she’d said. “But it’s not the carpet from DiNozzo’s car? I got it from lock-up, from the korrigan down there.”

He’s just so naïve. It’d be cute, if he wasn’t so annoying. And creepy. He’s creepy too.

“Who got it from the security guard, who got it from Tony’s car and replaced that one with the one from his own,” Abby replies shortly. “The first rule about breaking rules is to send the guy who doesn’t know he’s breaking a rule, Chip.”

“I could be fired,” he says, mouth twisting in horror. It’s a weird look on him, like watching a knot in a tree wind about. Uncomfortable to see, but she kind of wants to touch it. Cautiously.

“Actually, you could be arrested for obstructing a federal investigation,” Ducky corrects him, sidling into the room behind Ziva. “Here, Abigail, the sample from Hicks.”

“What sample?” Ziva asks, eyes still warily following Bert as he gnaws happily on the table leg. Abby ignores him, having long since hippo-proofed everything at ground level. Most everything, anyway. She’ll probably have to step in if he starts on anyone’s shoes.

“On our second examination of Mr. Hicks’ body, we found adhesive that matches the sample taken off our kidnapper from last night,” Ducky explains, signing the fibres over to Abby. “On that adhesive, car carpet fibres from a Mustang. Which we are going to run against Anthony’s to ensure that they are not a match for _his_ Mustang.”

“That’s not going to clear him for last night,” Chip says gloomily. Lurking as usual at the side of the lab, as far away from Bert as he can get, being one of the things that isn’t Bert-proofed, for a reason. Looking at his face, she’s reminded that she really needs to get some smiley face stickers. It really brings down the mood of a room.

“Yeah, well, it will stop them from pinning the original kidnapping on him,” she snaps. “We’re working on the rest of it, okay, Chip? A little positivity, perhaps?”

Suddenly, Ziva walks over and hugs her, and Abby realises that her eyes are burning and that there’s a tell-tale damp feeling on her cheeks. Damn. She’d thought she’d dealt with the tears. Abigail Sciuto does _not_ cry. Not ever. And not over Gibbs, who will be home very soon, or Jenny, who will be home probably _sooner,_ because Gibbs will stay behind to whoop ass. Something brushes her ear gently, and she realises that Ziva’s leaned in close. “I am following up a lead,” she murmurs into Abby’s shoulder, clearly wishing to remain unheard. “As we are all on building arrest for the time being, I will need to leave unwatched.”

Abby knows what she’s asking. “Thanks, Ziva,” she says loudly, stepping back and wiping her eyes. “I’ll feel better soon. Perhaps by this afternoon, at the latest.”

Ziva nods and walks out, Ducky watching them suspiciously. Maybe the hug was a little too much, Abby considers. Ziva isn’t usually the hugging type. But, she doubts Ducky will stop them—surely, he wants Gibbs back just as much as the rest of them do? No, he won’t be a problem. Now, to get rid of Chip long enough to make Ziva a cloaking spell good enough to get her out of the building.

“Hey, Chip,” she says sweetly as soon as the elevator takes Ziva back up to the bullpen, scooping up a teetering pile of folders and shoving them in his direction. “I’m probably going to be breaking the rules again. How good are you at tedious busy-work, somewhere far from here?”

 

* * *

 

“You know, they have cameras and you’re not supposed to be in here,” Tony tells her, slumped at the table in the interrogation room where Fornell has put him.

“Timmy is dealing with the cameras and Ducky bribed the guard,” Abby replies. And then, because he _has_ to know—he’s Tony! He always knows—she asks, “How do we fix this?”

He looks awful, skin ashen and eyes blank. But the look he gives her is all Tony, cocky and arrogant and so familiar it makes her want to hug him and never let go. “Us? We can’t. Gibbs could, maybe…”

“You can’t just give up! We need you!” She slams her palm on the table—doesn’t he realise how much they stand to lose? “An alibi, someone you said hi to, did you stop for gas? _Anything,_ Tony.”

“Where’s Ziva?” he asks, sidestepping her questions without looking her in her eyes.

He’s _such_ a butt.

“Busy.”

Now he meets her gaze, his own alarmed. He knows exactly what she means by ‘busy’, despite how innocent she tries to look, and he’s not happy about it. “Alone?” he says, voice cracking and one hand clenching around the side of the table hard enough that she hears the metal groan in protest. “Abby, we don’t work alone. It’s not safe.”

She leans in close, the sound of shouting floating up the hall. Fornell probably, noticing his missing guard. They’re out of time. “Exactly, Tony. We _don’t_ work alone. Your teeth marks are on this guy, the fibre we found on Hicks matches your car, they have your fingerprints… You need to help us prove that you didn’t do it.”

Because, if he doesn’t, they’re going to lose him too.

His eyes flicker past her as the door opens and Fornell enters, his face about as cheerful as a thundercloud and not saying anything, putting a hand on Abby’s arm. She yanks it away, glaring at him. “You’re supposed to be Gibbs’ friend!” she shouts, furious enough that she considers, just for a second, turning his head _into_ a thundercloud. “You know Tony didn’t do this!”

He shakes his head, and the anger in his face fades. “I know... I know. And every moment we spend questioning DiNozzo is time that takes us further away from finding Gibbs. But we checked the logs, on who accessed where Zach Tanner, the assumed target, was staying that night.”

“Why would I need that information?” Tony asks dully. “I’m going to jump ahead and say you found my log-in and password, but why would I have accessed it? Why would I leave a trail? I knew the kid was with Gibbs, hell, I _drove_ him there.”

“We don’t have a choice anymore,” Fornell says. There’s resignation in his voice, but that doesn’t make Abby hate him any less. “We have to book you, DiNozzo.”

As they lead him out the room, Abby stays and rests her hand on the table where, moments before, his own had gripped. The metal is cold. Tony doesn’t have body heat to spare and she’s never really hated that before except now, when she’s desperately trying to find something of him to cling to.

They’re missing something.

 

* * *

 

She runs every test again, because what else can she do?

“We’re allowed to leave the building now,” Chip points out when the light outside the window has faded enough that the lab seems gloomy and dull. “Are you going home?”

Abby stares at the computers for a second before shaking her head, standing, and grabbing her coat. “No,” she says to him, walking past him and into the elevator without looking back once.

 

* * *

 

“This is a bad idea, Abby.” Jimmy is even more nervous than his usual state of high anxiety, jiggling behind Abby like an owl given a shot of espresso. Abby can see his wide, frightened eyes reflecting the light from the streetlights, making them shine yellow-green.

“This is a good idea, Jim, you’re just bad at executing it.” Abby glances around to see if any of Gibbs’ neighbours are watching her carefully un-weave the FBI crime-scene sealing spell on the back door. “We’ll go in, have a look around, and leave. No one will even know we were here.”

“I’ll know we were here,” Jimmy groans. “And when the FBI come to question me, you know I’ll break. I’m so easily broken, I’m fragile. Shatterable. My nana used to say I was—”

Abby whirls on him, hand still glittering with the silver fire of her magic. “Jimmy! This is bigger than us! This is Gibbs, and Tony! Do you think they’d give up on us? Do you think Gibbs would turn around and go home? Well? Do you?!”

He takes a nervous step back, then forward again, torn with indecision. “They spell these things to tell them who goes in and out you know,” he points out. “Do you really think you’re good enough to get past that?”

What a question. It has only one answer.

“I _know_ I’m good enough.”

The spell gives way under her palm, and she beckons him over. He gives her one final plaintive look, before reaching up and tapping the back-door lock with a resigned huff. The lock shatters under his touch, bits inside tumbling apart. “There. Now we’re both going to jail. I bet they give me a room with Tony…”

Abby ignores him, stepping into the kitchen and calling a ball of witch-fire to light the gruesome scene. In the doorway, Jimmy hesitates again until Echo comes up behind him and shoves him into the room with a push of her nose, sniffing the air cautiously as she enters. Jimmy reaches a hand down and grips his dog’s collar, stopping her from walking across the crime scene. Abby looks down at the blood smeared across the flooring where her friend had been dragged, and something in her chest tries to tear its way out. The dust makes her eyes burn more. Stupid Gibbs should dust his stupid house.

She’s instantly sorry for calling him stupid, even in her head. Gibbs isn’t stupid, not at all.

She is though. And, because of that, they’re standing here with no damn answers and the weight of what they’re up against heavy on her shoulders.

“If we don’t find out who did this,” she says, “Tony won’t see the inside of a jail cell.”

Slavers rarely do.

 

* * *

 

Abby gets nothing from the blood, nothing from the shattered remains of the spells in the walls, and nothing from the charred spellwork left from the mages who’d taken Gibbs. It’s as though they’d known exactly what to do to defend against her magic, and her forensics.

Whoever did this must have known Gibbs’ team just as well as they knew Gibbs.

“They’re too wrecked to tell me anything,” she groans, pressed her hand against the wall and trying to light the security spells again. “They should be able to show me the last thing they ignited for, but I’ve got nothing.”

“Can you fix them?” Jimmy hovers by her knee, cat-like eyes missing nothing in the gloom.

“Not without a lot more juice than what I’ve got,” she admits, “and I can’t bring anyone stronger in to help, the spells won’t react to someone they don’t recognise.” She has to face the shitty reality of the situation: they’ve failed.

No. Not they—she. _She’s_ failed. Some witch.

But Echo steps up and taps her nose against the wall with a soft huff, the paintwork sparking slightly under her nose. Abby freezes, barely daring to hope. It’s not possible, not really, but heck, she’s seen weirder—she works with _Tony,_ after all.

“How about dogs they recognise?” Jimmy asks, his voice awed as the spell-work flashes to life under the dog’s touch, just sitting there sparkling and waiting for a wonderful witch like Abby’s command.

“Good dog,” she breathes, turning to the kitchen as the scene from the night before is re-enacted by the glittering echoes of the spells.

 

* * *

 

“He wasn’t there, Timmy!” Abby yells over the phone as soon as Tim answers, sounding suspiciously awake, and using her other hand to flick the lights on in her lab. The computers whir as they begin to come out of sleep mode, her workplace coming to life around her despite the late hour. “We went to Gibbs’ and checked the security spells—they showed three men, _none_ of them Tony.”

“You went to Gibbs’?” As usual, Tim zeroes in on the least interesting part of what she’s trying to tell him. “How? It’s sealed. And the security spells were fried, no one can get a read off of them.”

“I can.” Sort of. She isn’t going to tell him how grainy and patchy they were, or that they’d cut off right about the time Gibbs had decided to add a new entry point to their dead guy’s face. “You know I can. Besides, Tim, this is good! It means we have proof that Tony wasn’t involved!”

“It means we have proof, which you got illegally by the way, that he wasn’t there at the time of the attack. Nothing more, Abby. Who else was with you?”

Abby turns her head to look at Jimmy, who waves his arms at her in a panicked motion. “No one. Just me.”

Timmy, as _usual_ , picks the worst time to be astute. “It was Palmer, wasn’t it?”

Subject change time, before Jimmy’s heart gives out from the stress. “Look, Tim, we have the answer here somewhere, we’re just not seeing it! We need to find it, because if we don’t… it’s the _death sentence_ for slave trafficking. And it’s my evidence that they’ll use against him.”

There’s a long beat of silence that tries it’s very best to stop her heart, before Timmy speaks again, and oh _gosh_ , she could kiss that golem right on his clay lips! “I’ll be in soon. Tell Palmer to get some coffee ready. It’s going to be a long night.”

Giddily, she hangs up the phone just in time for her computers to make an angry beeping noise. “Jim! Don’t touch them!” she yells, ushering him away.

He looks puzzled. “I didn’t. I just walked near them.”

She’s busy checking to make sure he hadn’t fried them, answering him absently. “Yeah, after hours they get tetchy about who uses them. If you’re not assigned to that department, they won’t let you in.”

Jimmy goes quiet for a moment. “So Tony can only use his computer after hours?” he asks slowly. “Where were the records accessed from, with his credentials?” Her hands still on the keyboard, Jim holding his breath behind her. Slowly, she types in the command to bring up the logs before running the program that will tell her which department had accessed them.

“Abby,” Jimmy says, his voice sharp.

Heart hammering at the possible breakthrough, she ignores him. “Forensics,” she reads slowly. “It was accessed from forensics. But… only I can use them after hours? Tony wouldn’t have access.”

“Abby,” Jimmy says again, louder and with a hint of pain in his tone. She turns on her heel, arms down ready to grab him and drag him towards the screen that could save Tony’s life, because this is a break—

Chip smiles at her, Jimmy held tight in that spindly grip with his little arm twisted horribly behind his back. His eyes so big and glassy with pained tears that she can see herself reflected in them as he peers up at her miserably.

“And I was so careful too,” Chip says with no trace of his usual awkwardness. “If only you could leave well enough alone.”

Well, shit. She should have taken that class on defensive magic when the director had offered it. _This_ is why she hadn’t wanted an assistant.

Well, at least there’s one thing she’s good at.

She smiles.

 

* * *

 

“And then you set him on fire?” The FBI agent questioning her appears confused, eyebrows low and suspicious. “I thought you were a forensics witch?”

“I’m more a jack-of-all-trades,” Abby says sweetly, pressing the ice pack against her chin where Chip had struck her, right before she’d thrown witchfire into his face with all the anger she could muster. Served him right for being made of _wood_.

“…Right. And then where did he go?”

Abby swallows hard, her failure crashing through her. “I don’t know… I had to help Jimmy. By the time I picked him up, Charles was gone.”

McGee puts an arm around her, ignoring the agent’s irritated hiss. “It’s alright, Abby. They’ve got video of him attacking you, they’ve got the logs of him accessing the director’s files using Tony’s credentials, and I bet they’ll find plenty on him to tie him to this once they dig deeper. We’ll have him. He can’t just vanish.”

Ducky looks up from where he’s busy strapping Jimmy’s sprained wrist. “And, now we have him, we have a link to Jethro,” he says cheerily, looking more positive than any of them have for the past day. “And he will almost certainly need medical attention. You did elegantly, Abigail.”

Abby’s eyes begin to well, the empty space in the room that should contain Gibbs looming, ever present. “Congratulate me when he’s home. Right now, all I’ve done is set a pixie on fire.”

 

* * *

 

Her lab smells like charred wood, one wall covered in blistered paint. Abby sadly runs a hand over it, thinking of all the people that should be here. Kate. Gibbs. Jenny. Tony. All gone, and she hasn’t managed to bring back a single one of them.

Some witch.

“I’m sorry, Gibbs,” she says, blinking back more tears that Abby Sciuto apparently does cry.

“Never apologise, Abby,” says a gruff voice behind her. She jumps, spinning around to find Tony slouched against the doorframe with his best Gibbs expression. “It’s a sign of weakness.”

Her feet don’t even touch the ground as she hurtles across the room and into his arms. “You’re here! You’re free!”

He chuckles, the laugh rumbling through his chest and into hers. “Yeah, Fornell basically threw me out as soon as he had plausible deniability that it wasn’t me. Told me to get my ass back out on the street and bring Gibbs home.”

Abby releases him, glaring up at him with a determined expression. “Well, what are you waiting for then? Let’s go find him!”


	7. Tony and the Lost

Fornell’s eyes are tired and there’s a pain in them that Tony can’t even begin to understand. “Out,” he says shortly, pulling open the cell door. “You need to find them, soon.”

Tony bares his teeth at the werewolf, only half joking with the threatening expression. “What, you don’t think I’m capable of sentient trafficking anymore, Tobias?”

Fornell snorts. “I never thought you were smart enough. Get out of my sight. I have work to do.”

On his way out, Tony leaves through a milling throng of FBI wolves, all grim-faced and bristling with tension. They glower at him as he passes, but he can’t help but smile at the knowledge that the NCIS team aren’t the only ones looking for their missing members—even though, logically, of course a missing director of a federal agency is a big-ass deal, more so than a missing Gibbs. National security and all.

Still, Tony thinks as he looks at those wolves, Gibbs has more friends than he thinks.

 

* * *

 

“Chip? You mean Chip your assistant?” Tony asks again, just to be sure, ignoring McGee and Abby’s shared irritated glance. “No way was I framed by Chip. The guy loves me.”

“He hates you, Tony, he used to shake your soda cans if you walked away from them,” McGee says. “But it looks like he’s been siphoning files off for months. He could have any number of new targets now, and we still have no idea where he is or where he’s taking his prisoners.”

Tony shakes his head, working quickly over this new information. “He’s just their worm, their way into our archives. There’s more than him in this, it’s way too big for one weirdo pixie. Besides, mages would never work for him. He’s too uncanny. Where’s Ziva?”

The sudden silence in the room sets alarm bells ringing immediately. He stands, advancing on the two others with his best Gibbs glare, every one of his senses jangling with the lack of sexy Israelis in the room right now. The glare, however, might have been a little overdone, as they both shrink back from him. Wolf-y glares don’t work so well on a demon. But, since he’s got them successfully spooked, he asks again—slower this time—: “Where. Is. Ziva?”

“She snuck out yesterday to follow a lead,” Abby says rapidly. “She’s fine though, she’s been texting me every hour to let me know she’s okay. I made her promise.”

Tony stares at her. “She’s fine?” he says with ferocity, or at least, he tries. It’s more like he says it with squeaky uncertainty, as the responsibility of this team of wild cards lands solely on his Armani-clad shoulders. “She’s out hunting _slavers_ who specialize in _shapeshifters_ and she’s _alone_!” His voice increases in volume as it goes, the last twenty-four sleepless hours catching up on him. And, hey, _there’s_ that ferocity—right where he needed it, picturing Ziva in a cage.

“I can track her cell?” McGee offers tentatively. DiNozzo turns on him with a growl. “Right, tracking her now, Bo—Tony.”

 

* * *

 

“Shouldn’t we be looking into the car that the FBI found?” McGee shifts restlessly in the seat, eyes flickering from the rear-view mirror and back to Tony. Tony ignores him, scanning the building across the street for Ziva’s distinctive profile among the busy passers-by. “Tony?”

“They put that car there to frame me, McGet-With-The-Program. There’ll be nothing in there except what they want us to find.”

McGee goes silent for a minute and, when he speaks again, his voice is smug. “But you told Ziva that we’re investigators and that we don’t assume, we investigate.”

“I am investigating.”

“Investigating what?”

Sassy little shit. Tony’s so proud of his little McShy, growing up and back-talking him like a champ. He eyes the man that’s just appeared out of the café with Ziva, his face oddly familiar and entirely unsettling. Just because, he makes sure that he’s looking right as Ziva as he answers: “Investigating a massive pain in my ass.”

McGee looks at the man, hissing air out through his teeth. “He’s Mossad. I recognise him from Ari’s time, he came in before… Kate.”

“I know,” Tony says, opening the door. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting _hungry_. Let’s go say hi.”

 

* * *

 

“Hi there, Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, and you must be leaving to let us talk. Alone.” Tony gives the man standing next to Ziva his best charming smile, making sure to show more teeth than is probably necessary.

“Indeed,” the man says coolly, inclining his head in Ziva’s direction as she tries to glare a hole into the side of Tony’s head. “The company here has just gotten… tedious. _Shalom_ , Ziva. Good luck with your search.” He turns and walks away without a backwards glance.

“I was handling myself,” Ziva snarls, eyes glittering yellow with irritation. “He had information.”

“And I assume you now have that information? Good. Sharesies, there’s a nice kitty.” Tony leans in close, letting his jovial mask slip for just a second. “Because in Team Gibbs, we don’t run off _alone_ to talk to foreign operatives about matters of national importance like missing NCIS directors. You better remember that—it’s in the quiz they’ll make you take right before they kick your ass back to the Middle East.”

She cautiously holds out a USB stick, snapping her hand back when he takes it from her and tosses it to McGee. “Possible locations, these men are of interest to Mossad also. Slavers are a danger to everyone, especially if allowed to achieve a foothold.”

Tony nods and turns back to the car, expecting them both to follow. He’s a few steps off the curb when he realises Ziva hasn’t moved. “What now?”

She hesitates, mouth slightly open as she searches for the words to get him to agree to whatever bullshit she’s about to spit out at him. “I have further leads, ones that he was unwilling to trust to a copy. It would be best if I go without companions.”

Ha ha.

No.

His actual, verbal reply is only slightly less sarcastic, because Gibbs needs him to lead right now, not sass. “That’s not how we work.”

She doesn’t answer, just watches him expressionlessly, and he can’t help but wonder if the churning in his stomach is the Gibbs gut rubbing off on him. That’s not how they work, but they’re not exactly operating under optimal conditions right now. What’s a little improv’ between friends?

And, shit, he’s not Gibbs. Only gotta peek at his dental records to prove that.

“You check in every hour with me _and_ Abby,” he says, eyes locked on hers and deadly serious. If she fucks this up, well… it’ll be bad. Unspeakably bad. For _all_ of them. “You do not approach suspects. You do not leak this case to anyone. And you really, _really_ do not risk your safety.”

Ziva nods. “I understand. I will be safe.”

“Why are you letting her go?” McGee asks nervously when they’re back in the car, booting up his laptop and plugging the USB in.

Tony watches her disappear into the crowd, blending in remarkably well for a tall, beautiful Israeli with her conspicuous feline presence. The answer is simple, even if it’s not one Gibbs would have liked. “Because we need to play to our strengths if we’re going to come out of this in one piece. And she works better alone.”

 

* * *

 

Tony contacts Fornell with the locations listed on the USB, and they raid five warehouses before twilight hits. Three of them are empty except for old crates and copious amounts of dust. One contains enough glassware paraphernalia to outfit dozens of methamphetamine labs. The last one stinks of blood and piss, and Tony can spell the acrid burning scent of iron underneath it all. They clear it silently, and every face is grim. He finds Fornell standing by a shattered chain, a pair of child sized shackles bolted to the end, his face pale and fists clenched. Tony wonders if he has kids.

“Gibbs was never here,” Fornell says quietly, his eyes never leaving that coiled chain. “There’s not a sniff of him or Director Shepard anywhere on the premises.”

“We’ll keep looking,” Tony replies, keeping his voice steady.

“How could we have missed this? How many more of these places are there?”

Tony’s not entirely sure he wants the answer to that question.

 

* * *

 

When he walks into Abby’s lab, exhausted and smelling of a combination of horrors that he knows he’ll never be able to forget, he finds Abby carefully placing the finishing touches on the blistered paint of one wall. Her eyes are sunken, deeply shadowed by the sleepless nights they’ve been sharing. They’re all bordering on collapse. Still, he stands next to her and admires the photos she’s pinned over the charred marks, more photos of Gibbs than he’d ever expect to exist.

“A good luck charm?” he asks her, eyeing the corner of her office where she keeps an air mattress rolled up. Just a few hours of sleep, and he can hit the street again…

“A promise,” Abby replies so softly that her lips barely move. He pats her on the shoulder, forgoing a hug right now while he’s tense and hungry and stressed, before sloping off to the air mattress for rest he wouldn’t need so badly if he’d just go home and eat. As he finally begins to doze off curled up in the corner of her lab, he hears her talking. Raising his head to see if she’s speaking to him, Tony’s heart twists at the pleading words.

“Come home, Gibbs,” their little witch whispers. “We need you.”

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up barely an hour later, Abby is sprawled next to him, drooling onto his shirt shoulder, and McGee is sitting against the wall near them, his head at an odd angle and mouth hanging open. Tony smirks, squeezing his eyes shut. When he looks up, there’s a dim light beginning to filter through the windows of Abby’s lab and Palmer is curled up like a cat with his head pillowed on his dog’s flank, eyes open and regarding Tony wearily.

“Ducky’s asleep on the autopsy table,” he explains, shrugging carefully so he doesn’t wake Echo. “I didn’t want to go home…”

Tony nods and closes his eyes. Just an hour more…

…and wakes to his cell ringing, the others bolting upright and looking about wildly. Palmer, the only one who doesn’t move, sleeping solidly through it. McGee picks up the phone, squinting at the bright light. “It’s Ziva, she hung up,” he says, tossing the phone to Tony, who catches it before it can smack into Abby. Five missed calls, three texts. The texts are cryptic, just a jumble of numbers. When he calls back, the phone rings out.

“Start tracking her cell,” he instructs Abby and McGee. “She’s got something.”

“Or something has her,” McGee says under his breath, earning himself a damning glare.


	8. Ziva and the Breakthrough

“Ziva David. How very much like your mother you look. I had forgotten.”

Ziva slides into the seat across from her old colleague and watches him suspiciously. “It has not been so long since we last spoke, Natal.”

“And, yet, your beauty still surprises me.” He smiles at her, a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Why are you coming to me for information on the missing NCIS director? Are you not American now?”

She sucks in a startled, quiet breath. How does he know about Jenny? Outside of the relevant intelligence agencies, the news is being kept very hush. “If you know about Director Shepard, then you already know why I am here.”

He stirs sugar into his coffee thoughtfully, relaxed. “Of course. I am merely surprised that you approach me. It was my understanding that you are part of a ‘team’ now.” He pauses and leans in, an inquiring expression on his face. “I will help you, I just wish for my curiosity to be satisfied.”

“I am Mossad still. I am merely assisting the Americans. My superior officer was captured along with the director. Would you have me abandon him?” She laughs, knowing how much he dislikes being laughed at. “Loyalty had never been your strong suit.”

The taste of his scent changes minutely on her tongue, taking on a bite of anger. “Nor yours,” he says coldly. “Ari would agree with me on that.” There is nothing she can say to that without betraying her emotions to him, something she is unwilling to do. It occurs to her that even though she had worked alongside the man for years, he is, at this moment, essentially a stranger. Placing a memory stick on the table between them, he slides it carefully over. “The information you require. Give that to your ‘team’. Slavers are a danger to all. It would suit us if your FBI was able to discourage this particular group from achieving more of a foothold than they already have. After all, you know where their _exotic_ specimens come from… there is only so much they can achieve with American shifter breeds before they must expand.” She doesn’t break her gaze from his face, watching his posture shift and become uneasy. It is not hard to tell that he is not finished. Breaking under her gaze, he slides an envelope across quickly. “That one is for your eyes only and destroy it immediately after. I recommend you follow it _alone_.”

Into her pocket it goes, her thumb running along the fold. “Why has no one acted previously on this information?” she asks, letting a hint of a growl change the timbre of her voice. “People have died.”

But he ignores her question, reaching for his coat. “I would love to answer more of your questions, Officer David, but you have a friend about to crash our little get-together.” She follows his gesture, looking out the window. _Tony_. He must have followed her.

He is such a pain.

Natal picks up her coat and passes it to her with a sly smile, leaning in close as she shrugs it on and tucking his arm around her companionably. She bristles, fighting the urge to slide her palm back and press four piercing claws into the muscle of his thigh. “Tell me, Ziva,” he says smoothly into her ear as they step out of the cafe. “Since you are so dedicated to your new ‘team’, do you allow the demon to feed from you?” She stiffens in anger at his words, her eyes never leaving Tony as her teammate approaches, his face dark. “‘Therefore, I said unto the children of Israel, no soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall they suffer their blood to be consumed for the life of a creature is in the blood.’”

“Do not quote _Leviticus_ to me,” she hisses, feeling her face flush despite her attempts at controlling her anger. To be accused of what he is implying is… intensely distasteful. “He is a colleague.”

“He is a demon,” Natal says, hatred colouring his voice, before Tony draws near with a grin that bares his fangs for all to see.

“Hi there, Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, and you must be leaving to let us talk. Alone.”

 

* * *

 

Contrary to Tony’s beliefs, Ziva is perfectly capable of working in a team. But, sometimes, it is better not to.

She stretches, repositioning herself on the narrow branch of the tree she has chosen to oversee the complex revealed on the blueprints Natal had given her. They are not extensive, showing a perfectly normal warehouse system. They do not match what she is looking at. Small differences, but they _are_ there. Digging her claws into the bark, she eyes the doorway. To her human eye, it is deserted. About as heavily guarded as a storehouse is expected to be, nothing but some chain-link fencing and a battered sign with a barking dog painted upon it. To her feline eye, the doorway smears as though someone has run their finger through wet paint. A badly tuned cloaking spell. Abby could do better in her sleep. The faintest trace of cigar smoke drifts through the air; a sure sign of a bored guardsmen obscuring himself from view.

She slips higher into the crown of the tree, finding a sturdy fork and shifting to human, tugging the light mesh bag down from where she has looped it in the branches. It is always handy for containing those things that will not shift with her body along with her spelled clothes. Her cell-phone is one of the things inside, backlight off, and she quickly taps out her coordinates to Tony. If she is forced to move in suddenly, her phone will remain and give out her location along with the coordinates of the warehouse she has suspicions of. What more can Tony ask for?

Replacing the cell, she returns to cat form and sprawls out across the lower branch once more. Trusting in the gloom of the night and her own spotted coat to hide her, white tufted tail tucked under her body, so an involuntary twitch will not give her away.

She waits.

 

* * *

 

The rumble of an engine breaks the quiet of the morning. Ziva leans her head over the branch, watching a covered truck roll its way up the street and idling at the corner as though the driver has pulled over to take a call. The stench of diesel fuel rolls over her and she pulls her lips back in disgust as a man gets out the cab, leaving the door ajar as he strides over to an office complex and goes inside. The scent is faint, but it is there. As he opens the cab door, she catches it. Blood, werewolf. Male? She cannot tell. Other creatures mask the scent. Fear. Pain.

Scrabbling up the tree as the man makes his way back to his truck, she presses her claw against the button of her phone, cursing the cheetah’s awkward climbing abilities as her hind legs fumble for purchase. She possesses straight, non-retractable claws more suited to running and pulling down slim prey than climbing. Her lack of opposable thumbs is also troublesome. Speed-dial is a gift to shapeshifters—the only button she _must_ hit is the ‘1’.

The truck roars to life as the phone rings out and she switches her inward cursing to Tony. He will be mad at her if she moves without checking in with him, so why is he not on the phone? Ass! It is going to drive under the overhanging tree to get into the warehouse complex—if she misses this chance, they could lose it all. Once more, she presses her claw to the button before moving away and positioning herself at the end of the branch, calculating the distance.

Tony will just have to use his own initiative. McGee will surely be of help to him with that.

As the truck rumbles under, she drops like a stone and is almost immediately thrown off the roof by a bump in the road. Heart slamming in her chest, she manages to pull herself up, tail lashing, and lay flat. Ari would have done that so much more gracefully, no doubt while teasing her for her ineptness. He had always beaten her in challenges of grace—of course, he had never faced her on foot. Ari always had liked to have the advantage.

The truck falls into shadow as the warehouse door opens to allow it in, and she shrinks lower. She is committed now, there is no going back.

She hopes it is not all in vain.

 

* * *

 

The truck under her is empty, although it reeks of the distress of past cargo, and she waits until the men have closed the large sliding doors and left through a smaller one before dropping off the roof and prowling the floor. She lowers her head to sniff at a dark stain, recognising the acrid scent of cat urine, the slight bitter suggestion of caffeine in the old blemish hinting towards shifter origin. Female, young, terrified and injured. Just a simple house-cat shift. Why such small prey?

A darker patch of gloom in the wall beckons to her and she trots over to it, finding a small air vent grate, dented and torn beyond repair by the corners of decades of crates being shoved into it. It smells clean, of air and magic, fire and anti-pest spells, just what would be expected from a place like this. She slips in anyway and begins making her careful way through. It takes only minutes for her to discover the security spells.

It is like being drenched in water.

She creeps along the increasingly narrow venting, heading steadily downward until suddenly she is walking through a thick layer of spellwork, coating her fur and mouth and making her gag. She cannot even begin to sort one layer from another and guess at their purpose, but no doubt there will be enough traces of it on her fur for Abby to pick up later, if she stays in cat form. Seconds later, every one of her senses is assaulted and she knows exactly the purpose of the spells. Screams and barks and howls of every creature imaginable ring in her ears, the air thick with rot and filth and the musty, choking smell of too many creatures in the one space. Slinking along, she presses her nose to the mesh of the vent and looks down into hell. It is a horrific sight, but she does not allow herself time to be horrified. She has a goal.

Finding Gibbs in the jumble of cages and chains is easy.

There are therian wolves of every shape and size, along with dogs, bears, even several boars, all muzzled and collared. A row of smaller cages on the other wall holds the smaller creatures, foxes and glossy-coated bobcats among them. Yet another bank of cages holds exotics, a scarred zebra that stands with its flanks heaving in a cage too small for her to turn, a half-grown tiger with gangly legs, and even a dull-eyed pterippus, wings matted to its back and ribs showing against its white coat. Even as she watches, it sinks to its knees.

There is only one werewolf, and his distinctive size and silver coat mark him instantly among the smaller canines. She thinks dully that a full-grown werewolf would be a precious gem to these people, so rare to find one vulnerable without a pack to track it. Gibbs’ isolation had proven his downfall. The cage he is in is old but firm, made of expensive iron and holly bars. Bind and contain. He is not alone, the cage next to him containing the deep red coat of Jenny’s fox-form, motionless. Ziva does not waste time wondering why they have been placed together. She chirrs softly, watching his immobile form, wishing for some sort of reaction. She gets one.

He raises his head, staggers up, and they both flinch as his flank brushes the biting bars. His fur is slick with dried blood along one side, and she snarls inwardly as his movement reveals the cruel collar they have bound him with.

_“Gibbs?”_ she calls, narrowing the thought to a thin thread that only he should be able to hear. It is a difficult task for her at the best of times, a magical skill much more suited to shapeshifters who take companionable forms, but she feels his regard swing towards her. _“Look up.”_ His eyes flick up, skimming the roof and pausing on the vent. The collar stops his voice from reaching her, but she fancies that she sees a distinct disapproving look in his gaze. _“We will get you out.”_

It turns out to be easier said than done, in the end. Getting down is not the difficult part. The vent gives way easily under her claws and a ripple of silence spreads as she drops lightly to the floor, wide, shocked eyes turning on her from every angle. When she reaches him, Gibbs shakes his head at her, baring his teeth as she paces in front of the cage and searches it frantically for a weak point.

_“I’m not leaving without you,”_ she hisses, clawing at the corner of the bars and spitting as the iron sears her paw. He turns in a sharp circle, looking from the neighbouring cage holding the prone fox and back to her. Even speechless, she knows what he is saying.

_Her cage isn’t iron. Take her._

A sudden burst of furious noise near the door warns her of the guards’ approach. Even in their cages, the bound therians around her try to press together and hide her from view. Desperation striking, she attacks the smaller cage, dragging viciously at the light mesh and feeling it bite and tear at the soft pads of her feet. The jagged hole rips at her shoulders as she forces herself through, grabbing the fox in her mouth and pulling her out. Jenny is collared the same as Gibbs, narrow spikes attached to the ring imbedded shallowly in her flesh to stop her from attempting to shift. The cruelty of it takes Ziva’s breath away. Gibbs whines, peering past her, and she pauses for a single moment, locking eyes with him.

_Hurry up, go without me_ , his posture says clearly. _Save her._

_“I will be back,”_ she cries, begging him with her gaze to understand, trying not to think of how she will get him through the narrow vents that close in on even her slim shoulders. _“Wait for us.”_

Then, a guard is shouting; she has been seen, and she clambers onto the cages and leaps from them to pull herself into the vents, the slight weight of Jenny in her mouth dragging her down. Behind hers a guard trying to jump onto a cage to grab at her tail shrieks as the coyote inhabitant snaps at his foot and bites through.

She runs.

 

* * *

 

Ziva finds Tony standing alone by the cage where just hours before, Gibbs had paced. Around them, the SWAT teams and FBI personnel are silent, shocked by the sheer number of cages and chains, all empty. Every creature, every person, out of their reach. Vanished.

They had helped her escape, and she had left them.

All that remains is the sad remnants of the few who had been too weak to make the journey, among them the body of the winged horse, the pterippus, a round hole between its eyes ending its misery and denying it its freedom, even in its last moments. Ziva is disgusted and infuriated by that sight. They had been in such a rush, they had left a small fortune in magical creature lying dead in a cage.

Tony does not respond when she walks up next to him and places a hand on his arm, fighting her own guilt and shame. His shoulders slump, and there is a look of defeat on his body that drives a cold spike into her own heart.

They have failed.

Gibbs is gone.


	9. Gibbs and the Fighters

Ziva looks back once, yellow eyes almost swallowed by wide, black pupils. He can’t hear her, but he can guess what she’s trying to say by the desperation in every line of her slender body.

_“Wait for us.”_

He doubts it’s going to be that easy; when is life ever that easy?

But Jenny is out, and that’s all that matters to Gibbs. Women and children first, all the way to the end.

 

* * *

 

“Geddup, beast.” The guard kicks the bars, taser in one heavily gloved palm, and Gibbs wonders if the man is aware that the shock won’t stop him from biting straight through that glove to the hand below. “Make one move that I don’t like the look of, and I’ll put a bullet down your pup’s throat.”

Coward.

Gibbs lets them slip the muzzle over his head without protest, observing with keen eyes as around him shifters of every shape and size are dragged from their prisons and shoved towards various exits. Some of them fight because it’s not in their nature to go quietly, and they die quickly to bullet and spell. Some of them die because they’re too far gone to fight, and Gibbs watches those and swears that that will never be him.

He’ll fight when it’s time and he’ll exact his revenge in blood.

They move them, and every bump of the road underneath is more distance from the last place he saw a familiar face. He’s in a different truck from Zach. The last he’d sen of the boy, he was being herded with a half-dozen other young shifters into a different room, and Gibbs wonders if he’s ever going to see the boy again.

Yet another child he’s failed to protect.

 

* * *

 

His new prison is smaller and cleaner, but the creatures around him aren’t anywhere near as varied. He thinks at first that that might be a good thing, but one look at the bear shifter eyeing him through a scarred face in the cage across the aisle takes away any relief he might have felt. Two wolf shifters huddled together in the one pen watch him warily, their ears flat, and flinch away when he presses his muzzle against the cage bars and huffs a greeting. They’re scared of him. He can’t help but get the feeling every creature in the room is carefully sizing him up, trying to look for advantages or weak points. They won’t find any, and that dark thought taunts him.

He’s the strongest one here.

 

* * *

 

They’re fed well. Gibbs tries not to think about why that is.

A grim-faced healer comes around to the pens daily and checks them over with brusque but gentle hands. Gibbs meets his eyes only once, the first day the man opens the pen, and, for a moment, the two watch each other warily. The healer waits to see if Gibbs is going to attack; Gibbs waits to see if he should. But the healer’s face is sad and full of something that Gibbs hasn’t seen since Desert Storm and, instead, he settles back down and lets him tend to his shoulder and flank.

Just because he’s not in a cage, doesn’t make him any less trapped.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks after being moved to the new holding area, Gibbs wakes up to find a scrawny boy huddled in the cage next to him. The entire pen reeks of fear and anger. It’s a harsh, reptilian scent, and, when the boy lifts his head to stare unblinkingly into Gibbs own eyes, the pupils are narrow and grim.

_“How did they manage to capture you_?” Gibbs sends to the glamoured dragon, unable to hold back the shocked thought even though the collar around his neck traps them in his own mind. The boy tilts his head and a pink tongue flickers over chapped lips.

_“I could ask the same of you, werewolf,”_ says the soft voice in return, muted by the iron but still barely audible.

And very young.

When Gibbs lays against the bars that night, the boy presses against him on the other side and the sound of his heart thudding dully lulls them both to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Sixteen days after his capture, the healer runs a hand over his neck and stands with a quiet, “He’s sound.”

_“I don’t like the sound of that,”_ the boy sends, watching them both with his knees drawn up to his chest. Neither does Gibbs, but he yawns casually and does his best to look nonchalant. No point in them both being scared.

 

* * *

 

The healer doesn’t open his cage the next day, but two guards do and one look at the silver batons they carry is enough to quell any rebellion he might have felt. Rough hands remove the collar from his neck, and the instant rush of _sensation_ almost knocks him over. He sends fast and sharp, desperate for a familiar voice: _“NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Wolf of the Quantico area pack, is there anybody free?”_

_“Long way from Quantico, Leroy,”_ replies an amused female voice, almost musical in its intensity. _“First time?”_

_“First time what? Who are you?”_

A laugh. _“Don’t be human out there, Leroy. Don’t hesitate.”_ And, with that, she’s gone, cutting the link easily and leaving him bereft and shaking with sick anticipation of what’s ahead.

He’s led from the room and into a narrow corridor, the door clanging shut behind him and leaving him alone. He blinks, takes the chance to stretch out limbs grown sore and cramped from captivity, and examines his new prison. Before he can think, a gate slides open at the other end and the dull roar of a crowd of voices rings through, carrying the scent of sweat and an almost feverish excitement. He already knows what he’s going to face before he walks out there but, in the end, they don’t give him a choice. But, despite his fears, it’s not as bad as it could have been.

It’s not a shifter.

Gibbs emerges into a lowered pit with a darkly stained concrete floor and ringed with a blurry mass of onlookers magically shielded from his sight. The dog that turns to face him from the other side of the pit is huge, heavily muscled on thickset legs, and watches him with a squat face covered with a dozen small, beaded eyes that blink independently of each other. Gibbs sizes the monster up, pushing away the fierce relief that he isn’t being forced to fight a human, before lunging with wide, ready jaws.

He doesn’t hesitate.

 

* * *

 

Some nights, he dreams of his team and how they’re coping with his absence. Tony will be fine, just fine. He’s a good leader, a natural. He’ll hold them together. Abby… will have Tony and Ducky to help her through it. Same with Tim, same with Palmer.

And Ziva?

On these nights, he wakes abruptly with the memory with golden eyes and the bitter scent of the desert.

He misses them all, even her.

The days slip together into an endless stream of bouts against various creatures, all of which Gibbs wins easily against. The fights aren’t fatal, there’s some unknown system of scoring used against them that means the matches usually end before mortal wounds are inflicted. They’re expensive to replace if the fights go too far, after all.

At night, the dragon boy scratches messages into the concrete between their cages with hardened talons, a varied jumble of schoolyard stories and odd facts he remembers from his classes, and Gibbs reads them all religiously. They can communicate by voice but pushing past the iron collar is exhausting and reading is a familiar call-back to life before the pit.

It hasn’t even been a month, but it feels like another lifetime.

One night, the boy scratches out a story to him with painstaking care and, when Gibbs peers at it the words are just a jumble of ragged lines. His heart stutters in his chest and dully he acknowledges the biggest difference between werewolves and shifters. Shifters are people with the ability to take animal shape. Werewolves are just as much wolf as they are human, and they’ve all heard the stories of how easy it is to lose one to the other.

Eventually, he works up the courage to look again and the lines are familiar and legible once more, but the fear of the moment takes a long time to fade.

 

* * *

 

It’s an uncertain time after. Time means nothing in Hell. He’s facing his first shifter. Looking at the dull-eyed tiger with horror rushing through him, he feels a wry sort of amusement returned from his opponent.

_“Don’t hold back or they’ll hurt us both,”_ the tiger sends, and his voice is old and tired despite his relatively youthful size. _“I certainly won’t.”_

And he doesn’t.

It’s the first time Gibbs is injured.


	10. Us in the Time Between

“Acting Team Leader,” Tony corrects Director Shepard, a slight hint of reprobation in his tone. She straightens and stares at him with an odd expression, her mouth grim. “Until Gibbs is back, I’m just… Acting Team Leader.”

“Agent DiNozzo, you do understand that after six weeks MIA the chances of Agent Gibbs being recovered are slim?” Her voice is kind, and he wishes she’d be crueller about it. The neckline of her blouse is low enough that, when she stands, his eyes automatically find the thick ring of scarring around her slim neck, still red and raw from her own mistreatment at the slaver’s hands. She’ll carry the stripes of silver for the rest of her life. He stares until she clears her throat politely, calling his attention back to her face.

“You’re giving up on him.” The words hurt him to say, but he hopes they hurt her more to hear.

She lifts a hand to run it gently along the welts, as though still unused to their existence. “On the contrary, I have every faith in Jethro’s ability to survive and persevere in even the darkest of situations. But he cannot be our priority when we have more urgent cases that haven’t gone cold. When we have others in just as much danger. He wouldn’t want us to focus on him at the expense of others.”

When he speaks again, past the lump that fills his throat, his voice is childish as though he is being deprived a sweet instead of the chance to find the man he respects and loves. “He saved your life.”

Her eyes close for a moment, blank expression shifting to show the pain she’s hiding. “It’s not the first time,” she says, and walks away from him. He follows her to the door as she holds it open, a clear dismissal. “And it won’t be the last, Agent DiNozzo.”

He can’t say anything else. Just, “Director,’ as he steps from the room and waits for what’s coming.

The door clicking shut behind him is like the end of an era.

 

* * *

 

The last time Abby saw Gibbs walking through her lab door, it was two months ago and she hadn’t even realised at the time how lucky she was to have him. How time changes things, huh?

That’s why on a Tuesday during her lunch break, she’s sitting at a café waiting for her freaky ex to show up. Freaky being an adjective used to describe most of her exes, but being particularly appropriate for…

“Mikal. Hi.”

He slides into the seat opposite, grinning widely at her with large, black-rimmed eyes. The kid wears more makeup than she does, still. Even now. Abby studies him and groans inwardly as she realises something.

It’s still really fricken’ hot.

“Abby, you called me back, finally,” he gushes, smile widening even more as he reaches across to take her hand. She pulls it away and returns his affections with a weak grin she doesn’t feel. “I _knew_ you would.”

 _Do it for Gibbs, Abigail,_ she tells herself twice before managing to work up the guts to speak again. There’s some kinda natural, primal ‘do not touch’ instinct going off in her brain trying to warn her away from him, but she’s never been a ‘listen to your instincts’ kind of girl. That’s what she has Gibbs for.

Had.

“Actually, I had a question,” she asks, leaning in and meeting Mikal’s eyes intently. The stink of camphor and bleach is strong on his clothes as he sidles closer, a faint hint of rust under it. “Remember when we dated, briefly?”

“How could I forget?”

Oh god, she’d forgotten how intensely needy he is.

_Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs._

“You remember the magic you wanted to show me? I was wrong… I want to see it.”

 

* * *

 

Their newest probie perches between Tony and McGee in the truck and can’t seem to decide who she’s more intimidated by. Tony wants to smile at her and tell her not to worry about _them_ , it’s the woman in the back quietly doing a Sudoku that’s the danger, but, somehow, he doesn’t think ‘Probationary Agent Michelle Lee’ will really believe him. Gibbs would have hated her. She’s everything the agency wants in their agents, and everything Tony and Gibbs consistently fail to be.

“Lee, go check the stream for evidence,” Tony barks, watching her jump a foot and scuttle away. “Can you believe they gave us a human, McGee?”

After all, look what happened to the last one they’d been trusted with.

“I cannot believe they let you have a trainee at all, Tony,” Ziva pipes up, wandering past and shooting him a mocking look. “You will ruin her.”

“She’s already ruined,” Tony mutters, not meeting Ziva’s eyes. “She’s a lawyer.” McGee doesn’t answer, just follows Ziva with a distant look on his face, as though his mind is miles away. “Something ticking in that giant brain of yours, McDistractable?”

“Hmm?” McGee turns to him and blinks stupidly, pale and worn looking. “Sorry, Tony. I wasn’t listening.” Tony shakes his head, dismissing him and watching carefully as he walks away. It’s probably nothing, they’re all working harder without… well, with Lee as their probie.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s covered her lab in whiteboards with markers of every colour and is standing by the door handing out ‘hi my name is [ **blank!!** ]’ to them as they walk in.

“Tony, we know who everyone is,” Tim grumbles as Tony sticks one on his forehead with a flick of his wrist. He pulls it off, scratching at the sticky residue left behind. “Why are you doing this to us again?”

“It’s motivational. It promotes team spirit and a sense of comradeship.” Tony peels another sticker and goes to stick it on Ziva, rethinking his intention when she turns and affixes him with her best unblinking stare.

Jimmy swings his legs from his perch on the worktable, eyeing the newly roped off corner of her lab uneasily. “Abby, why is your lab all… wet?”

To dispel the sense of doom that Tony’s ‘Comradeship Seminars’ always seemed to produce, she smiles brightly. “For Bert. He dries out easily.”

“You charmed a corner of your lab into a swamp for a tiny hippo?” Jimmy blinks a few times, clearly uncomfortable. The paranoia is, for once, probably well-deserved. Even in miniature, the hippo outweighs him. Abby makes a mental note to Bert-proof Jimmy if he decides to leave his safe perch at any point.

“Where else was I going to put him now we’re working extra hours?” she chirps, trying to lift the gloomy tone of the room. Tony flinches as though it’s a deliberate dig at his leadership skills. She’ll have to make it up to him later. Eyes still locked on the still, murky water, Jimmy giggles a little hysterically.

“Physical trust exercises today!” Tony exclaims with his arms held wide, all the better to display his cheerful ‘hi my name is **SUPREME LEADER!!** ’ sticker on the centre of his chest.

“I’m going to be sick,” Tim announces. Without a pause between the announcement and the act, he dashes out.

“I’ll help him, err… not be sick,” Jimmy says, eyes flickering between the retreating golem and Tony’s maniacal grin, and choosing the less disturbing path with a frantic clatter of wings. Ziva stands up and leaves without offering an excuse, leaving Abby and a deflated-looking Tony standing in the lab. Abby absently rubs letters off of ‘COOPERATE AND COMMUNICATE’ written in sunset orange on the closest whiteboard, leaving ‘CO P  ATE OMUN            TE’ emblazoned cheerily across it.

“I’m up for physical trust exercises, Tony,” she offers. “I do them all the time with the nuns I bowl with, I’m an old hat.”

“They hate me,” Tony says gloomily, kicking a dropped sticker into Bert’s pool. The water under it bubbles as the hippo surfaces, sniffing at it and retreating back under with an irritated huff. Abby watches it sink in the silence that follows. She could explain to him just what exactly it means to ‘try too hard’, but he looks so woebegone that she just doesn’t have the heart. “Something’s wrong with Timmy,” she says instead, wiping the rest of the vowels off the board and scrubbing her hand on her pants to try and get the orange smears off. “I didn’t even know golems could get sick, and he’s looked yuck for weeks now. Like his skin is all doughy.”

Tony shrugs and runs his fingers through his hair, looking older than she’s ever seen him. “He’s tired, Abs, we all are. Things are harder now.” She thinks of the spells Mikal’s given her and the packages hidden in her home that she’s had to go through three different suppliers to buy with fake IDs for each of them, wondering if he realises just how accurate that statement is.

They’re not much of a team these days, and it’s changing everything.

 

* * *

 

Tim opens the door of his apartment and Tony is sprawled on his couch, legs wide open and head lolled back to watch him enter.

He’s not smiling.

“I thought you had to be invited in,” Tim says snidely, dropping his bag and scanning the room to see what Tony’s touched. His heart sinks when he sees the door to his study standing open. Tony doesn’t answer, just stands and walks in there, Tim trailing helplessly after him. “It’s not what you think…”

“What I think?” Tony says with dangerous calm. “Because what I think is that you’ve got enough computer power setup here to run the Matrix, except you’re playing the role of the entire human race. Being a battery doesn’t suit you, Tim. You’re looking cracked.”

Around them, the computers hum softly, banks of monitors blinking in and out as the pre-programmed searches cross-reference each other continuously. “I can handle it,” Tim lies.

Tony hums non-committedly. “Which is why you were sick today, and why you’ve been walking around like you’re half asleep for near on a month now. You think you can find Gibbs like this?”

Tim reaches for the thread of his power, always within reach these days. The rush of information from the complex network as he touches it almost overwhelms him. Tony doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to get a handle on himself before answering. “I think it’s better than doing nothing and hoping for a miracle. We all have to do our parts.”

Tony looks away and there’s a flicker of anger on his face that Tim worries is aimed at their other teammate. “All except one,” he murmurs, and Tim wouldn’t have heard the quiet words except Tony is standing near the microphone of his computers, where Tim is quietly funnelling himself through to check that his programs are still working.

“It’s not her fault,” he says, losing track of his search and having to start again, knowing he’s standing there oddly still with his magic glittering over him.

Tony turns on his heel and walks out, calling back over his shoulder. “Halve the load, McGeek. We need you more than the computers do.”

Tim listens and lessens it, just... not by half.

He can handle it.

He has to.

 

* * *

 

Tony is cold towards her. She understands. He lashes out because otherwise the guilt of losing Gibbs will drown him, leaving him unable to function. She left Gibbs in that squalid room, she deserves every bit of his hatred.

It is nothing she does not feel for herself.

“Come out tonight?” Abby asks her, stopping in front of her desk. Ziva looks up, blinking in surprise at the heavy coat the forensics witch wears despite the positively balmy weather outside. “You can’t hide away from Tony forever, he’s not really mad at you.”

He is, but she cannot expect Abby to understand.

“No, I have plans,” she says instead, turning back to her report. “Ask Agent Lee. I am sure she will delight in accompanying you.”

Abby pulls a face and departs alone, leaving behind the faintest trace of suppressed magic on the air. Ziva sniffs, wrinkling her nose at the strangely acrid scent of it. The scent of her magic has never been quite so disagreeable before. With a terse smile, McGee leaves, looking only moderately better than his appearance over the past week. He is overstepping himself. But, then again, they all are. She waits until the office is empty before pushing her bag under the desk and leaving empty handed.

Dusk is touching the world outside and turning everything vague and unfocused as she takes to cheetah form and begins the steady pace that will allow her to weave up and down side-streets and alleys, searching for a familiar scent as she goes. It has taken her weeks to cover as much ground as she has, without a sniff of anything that could lead her to him, but she is optimistic.

She will find him. And, this time, she will bring him home.

 

* * *

 

Jimmy walks into autopsy and Ducky is shouting at Abby. It’s mad, senseless, incongruous. Ducky? Their Ducky, shouting at _Abby_? Jimmy stops and stares, feeling as though he’s somehow stumbled into an episode of _The Twilight Zone_ as his two co-workers turn dark expressions towards him.

“Mr. Palmer, if you could give us a moment please,” Ducky begins, his voice shaking with anger and something that is absurdly close to fear.

“Don’t bother, Jim, I’m just leaving,” Abby snaps, striding past them both. Jimmy is stunned to see the glint of tears on her cheeks. _Ducky made her cry?_

“Abigail!” Ducky calls, and now his voice is desperate. “You could lose _everything_.”

She whirls, and Jimmy has to duck to avoid her skirt hitting him in the face. “We’ve already lost everything!” she shrieks, and the light flickers ominously.

“I won’t have any part of it,” Ducky says finally, turning away. Abby sniffs and walks out, head down and tilted away. He waits a beat before dashing after her, recognising the signs of a foul mood descending on Ducky as the air in autopsy thickens and takes on a strong salty tang on his tongue.

“Abby!” he calls. She stops but doesn’t look at him. “You’ve got a plan? To find Gibbs?”

A slight nod is his only response.

It’s not easy—it’s _never_ been easy for Jimmy to be brave not ever, not when he’s barely a foot tall and clumsy—but he manages to say it even though he thinks he might faint at the thought.

“I want to help.”


	11. Tony and Rule Fifteen

“The director wants to see you.” As soon as Cynthia is done delivering this curt order, she hangs up. Tony pulls a face at the phone, before quickly checking to make sure none of his team have noticed his momentary lapse in professionalism. It’s only been three months and he’s already getting pretty sick of Shepard’s continued insistence upon ‘checking in’ on them. They’re coping. They’re fine. _Fine_.

Honest.

“Director,” he greets her, strolling in with his best nonchalant face. She barely glances up at him, brow furrowed in concentration at the folder in front of her.

“Special Agent DiNozzo. I hear you did great work with the Jonson case earlier this month, we’ve had commendations.”

“Just doing our jobs, ma’am.”

Now, she finally looks up at him, smiling slightly. His gut churns at that smile. Isn’t there a Gibbs rule about smiling redheads? If there isn’t, there should be. “Well, in the three months since gaining the post, you’ve done admirably. In fact, you’ve exceeded all expectations.”

He doesn’t react, face still. Either the woman is cold, or she compartmentalises her emotions better than anyone else he knows. She makes three months sound like eons. Three months isn’t that long. Three months isn’t enough time to get used to the hair on the back of his head remaining unslapped, or to be able to enjoy the burn of bourbon again without gagging, or to be able to smell wood shavings without turning his head instinctually to look for a man who isn’t there.

“Thank you,” he says stiffly, letting her lead the conversation.

“But,” she begins, and the smile has vanished this time. Tony braces. He’d known there was going to be a ‘but’. “We’ve noticed the toll leadership is having on you. Perhaps a break is in order, a chance to get away from… this.”

“Ma’am?” Is she firing him? For a moment, he really thinks she is, wondering what he’ll do without this place.

Instead of firing him, she slides a folder across the desk and, when he opens it, the last face he’d ever expected to see within NCIS stares back at him. “You are uniquely placed to be of use to us with this case,” she says. “It’s deep undercover, of course. You’ll have to be no-contact except for a handler, but I think you’ll find the opportunities that will be open to you after the op is successful… perhaps your own team, outside of Gibbs’ shadow. How does Rota sound?”

Spanish. Hot. Far away.

Tempting.

Leave DC?

“No,” he says shortly, closing the folder with a snap. “The danger would be… no. And I won’t leave while Gibbs is still out there.”

She nods like she’s not surprised but tries again anyway. “We have a taskforce dedicated to the retrieval of those lost to the slavers, working with every other agency in the country and much better suited to finding Jethro than the MCRT.”

Tony smiles. It’s not a real smile but she doesn’t know that. “I respectfully decline your offer, Director. I’m sorry.”

He’s not.

 

* * *

 

That week, two more NCIS agents go MIA. A task force swarms the bullpen, pulling two desks apart for any clues to suggest what has happened to their occupants, how they were made vulnerable. Chip’s legacy.

“Kendra isn’t even a shifter,” McGee murmurs. “She’s a wind witch.”

Tony stays silent, eyes locked on Balboa standing by the entrance to his bullpen and watching the task force searching for anything to lead them to his missing witch. The man looks up and meets Tony’s gaze; his expression is the same one that Tony sees every day when he looks in the mirror. The case has gone far beyond Gibbs. It’s not quiet anymore.

That night, every TV channel has pictures of the missing people, hours and hours of minute details of all of them, warnings on how to stay safe, documentaries on the history of slavers and necromancy. Tony flicks aimlessly through, watching a channel mindlessly until the words NCIS or ‘Leroy Gibbs’ appear before switching to the next. Eventually, he turns it off completely. It’s a strange feeling, having everyone suddenly discussing the nightmare his team have been living for three months.

 

* * *

 

They’re distracted, maybe they have reason to be, but they pay the price and, as team leader, the blame lies on him. That doesn’t stop him from lashing out.

“Tony, I’m fine,” McGee insists, glamour sitting strangely on his face where the crowbar had shattered in his forehead. It gives the oddest impression of a thin material stretched over an empty space, as though Tony could tap his finger against it and make a drum beat. “It’s easily fixed, it doesn’t even hurt.”

If he was human, he’d be dead. If it had of been Lee, she’d be dead. Ziva, dead. Him? Alive, maybe. Probably not entirely. He’s resilient, not immortal.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Tony snaps, eyeing the way McGee’s left eye looks so slightly out of place and feeling ill. He’s supposed to _stop_ his team from being hurt. “Who was on your six?” Lee jolts and stammers out half an apology as Tony whirls on her.

“I was,” Ziva interjects. “I was supposed to be watching Lee, I was negligent. It will not happen again.”

“You were negligent, and McGee could have died!” Tony snarls. He knows he’s dancing dangerously close to losing control. “We work as a team, David. A _team._ That means we watch each other’s backs, we don’t lose each other!” Something in his tone must rub her the wrong way, because suddenly she’s in his face and her lip is curled in a way that suggests he’s about to find out what happens when you piss off a cat.

“Lose each other like I lost Gibbs?” she says in a low, dangerous growl. If he says what he’s thinking in response to that, there’s no coming back from the betrayal she’ll feel. He could walk away. He _should_ walk away. He’s angry, irrational. Not exactly the best time to be playing verbal chess with a Mossad operative with a razor-sharp tongue.

“Exactly,” he says instead, and even he’s shocked by the bitterness in his tone. For a moment, he’s sure she’s going to hit him, and he waits for it. He deserves it. Instead, she turns on her heel and stalks away, shoulders straight and back stiff.

He lets her go.

“That was uncalled for,” McGee says, mouth twisted unhappily. “That was really uncalled for.”

“Problem with my leadership skills, McGee?” He doesn’t look at McGee, can’t look at McGee without feeling the possibility of another loss hanging over their heads like a macabre raincloud.

A beat of silence follows, then his sullen reply: “No, Boss.”

It’s a lie and they both know it.

 

* * *

 

“Agent DiNozzo.” Lee is nervous, wringing her hands in her shirt and biting at her lip. Even after three months, she’s still not comfortable working with him. Which is fine by him, because he prefers her not to get comfortable. There won’t always be a place for her, not once Gibbs comes back.

“Lee,” he says coolly, fingers stilling on his keyboard. The cursor blinks slowly on the half-finished report about McGee’s injury. _No agent was to blame for the injury,_ typed out solidly in Times New Roman, waiting to be sent on to the director and Law. _No disciplinary actions will be undertaken as a result._

“I want to talk to you… about… about Miss Sciuto.”

Oh. Well, he hadn’t been expecting that, but he’s not _surprised_. He rattles off the spiel they all learn within a month of starting at NCIS. “If you have a problem with her conduct, you need to speak to HR. Ask for John, he deals with Abby complaints. If you have a problem with the way she dresses, ask for John. He also deals with that. If you—”

“I think she’s a mole.”

And, in the blink of an eye, the furious anger from before is back and she’s stepping backwards like a frightened mouse. He gets a savage kind of pleasure from her fear and the way it changes her scent, before carefully rearranging his face to be less… predatory. “Excuse me?”

He doesn’t really mean for that to sound as cold as it does.

Lee charges on anyway, without meeting his gaze. “She locks her door most of the time now and won’t let anyone into the lab until she’s done with her ‘tests’, except I’ve checked her logs and the tests she’s running don’t need to be isolated, and when you go in there the whole place smells like disinfectant and camphor and I asked Jimmy but he said to drop it and got all funny and I found her access code on the missing agent’s files, and—”

He cuts her off before she passes out from lack of air. “And you thought you’d just casually accuse her of being a traitor to her country. You do realise the damage you could do by shooting your mouth off about this?”

Lee freezes like a rabbit. “Ye… No. Not really. I just think… maybe she’s doing something she shouldn’t be.”

“Lee?”

“Yes, Agent DiNozzo?”

“Get out.”

The sound of a startled sob floats back to him as she bolts for the elevator and he cards his fingers through his hair anxiously, the beginning of a migraine throbbing in the back of his skull. Another visit to HR in the morning, no doubt.

He probably could have handled that better.

 

* * *

 

His next stop, expectedly, is forensics. He doesn’t take a Caf-Pow because she doesn’t get one for being weird—not because he forgot. He didn’t forget. Gibbs wouldn’t have forgotten.

He misses Gibbs.

She hasn’t noticed him when he slouches in the doorway watching her, but he charges forward anyway and only smiles a little when she twitches with surprise. “Anything you want to talk about, Abs?” The loud music is aggravating the headache he already has building but, despite that, he knows she’s heard him. He can sense her pulse quickening. “Ignoring me for any particular reason?” As he sidles up to her, he gives her his best charming smile.

She looks up, face dark. “Third bottle on the left, pour out thirty mLs, boil it, drink,” she says shortly before turning back to the slides.

“You mad at me, Abby?”

“It’ll help your headache.”

Oh yeah. She’s pissed. He does as she says, feeling the instant relief when he downs the oddly flavoured mixture. “Watermelon?”

Her shoulders twitch. He knows he’s got her; she can never resist talking about her concoctions. “If it tasted bad, no one would drink it,” she says finally, turning around and staring at him with an exasperated expression. “You were out of line with Ziva. She didn’t deserve that.”

Ah.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll fix it.”

“Can you?” She looks so woeful that he can’t help but walk over and pull her into a hug, hearing her sniff sadly into his shirt. He tucks his chin on her head and closes his eyes, appreciating the closeness. He’s missed this. Judging by her reluctance to let go, she has too. Plus, it lets him catalogue the differences in her that he’s been too preoccupied with his own problems to notice. She’s lost weight, too much of it. Always skinny, but now he can trace the outline of her bones through her clothes if he’s so inclined. She also smells different. Harsher, less… Abby.

Maybe sick?

Tony misses Gibbs again keenly in that moment. The man knows Abby. He could have gotten her to spill with one long glare and a twitch of his formidable eyebrows. And if she _is_ sick, he’d have smelled it on her before it was even a problem. The magic of the canine nose. Tony has his own way of knowing if people are ill, but it isn’t exactly co-worker friendly. Maybe he can ask Ziva…

“You’d tell me if there was something going on, wouldn’t you, Abs?” he asks the top of her head.

She sniffs again and shakes slightly in his grasp, either laughing or crying. “Why would there be something going on?” she mumbles, and her voice doesn’t give it away either. He decides to go with laughing: that’s easier to deal with.

He wishes he had the answer to that question.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s already on his third beer when Fornell slides onto the stool next to him and waves down the bartender. “DiNutso,” he greets him. “On your tab tonight.”

Tony runs his finger over the ring of condensation on the wood of the bar, smearing it, and snorts. “I paid last week.”

“And you will next week too. You don’t think I come out here for pleasure, do you?”

Tony rolls his eyes. Business first, then. Like usual. “Got any leads for me?”

Fornell nods and pulls a hard-backed notebook from his coat pocket, tracing a finger over the careful writing as he runs over the contents with Tony. It’s a weekly tradition now. Tony tells him everything they don’t know, Fornell tells him what they do. It’s his way of not giving up.

Two hours in and plenty of alcohol, they’ll both stop pretending they’re there for any reason other than loneliness, and Fornell will tempt Tony into a game of pool that he’ll lose on purpose. Eventually, they’ll both just get drunk and avoid talking about Gibbs while Fornell rattles on about his daughter and ex-wife and Tony pretends to listen. Finally, they’ll get their coats and stagger out, Fornell telling him that it’s always a displeasure to see him and Tony laughing and returning the sentiment.

Then, they’ll do it again next week. Etcetera, etcetera.

Life goes on.

 

* * *

 

That night, Tony curls up drunkenly on the couch and stares at the blank screen of Gibbs’ ancient TV, lights from the streetlamps outside glittering through the curtains. After three months, the living room smells more like Tony than Gibbs and the kitchen holds barely a fading trace of its previous occupant. Tony’s cleaned it up. Lick of paint. Even got Abby in to help replace the spell-work. Made it nice for Gibbs to come home to. Keeping the place warm and lived in. Unloved houses get nasty, he knows, and Gibbs wouldn’t want to come home to a mice-infested house, or one with brownies in the attic. The basement lies untouched and, occasionally, Tony goes down there and runs a hand along the unfinished boat, before leaving and closing the door carefully to seal in the scent. He can’t finish the boat. Gibbs is gonna have to do that himself.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. It never does, surrounded by ghosts, but at least this way Gibbs won’t be forgotten.


	12. Abby and the Wrong Magic

One of the plus sides of mainlining caffeine as a majority of her daily caloric intake is that Abby is almost always the first one into work, occasionally beaten by Ducky. Today is the exception. She flicks on the lights in her lab, Bert’s carrier hung on one arm, and jumps about a foot when the illumination reveals Ziva curled up in her office chair, knees tucked to her chest and looking mildly sad. Which, for Ziva, is fundamentally a complete emotional meltdown.

“Is that not heavy?” Ziva inquires, eyeing Bert’s carrier as Abby eases it to the ground by his swamp and pops the clasp. Bert grumbles within, quite content to continue snoozing until the sun rises, at least.

“Anti-weight charm.” Abby cautiously approaches and sitting on the desk next to her. “Have you been here all night?”

“I went for a run,” Ziva says. “I could not sleep. I thought I would get some work done, perhaps. Get a head start on the reports that Tony has been hiding under his desk.” There’s a pause before Ziva says the name of their team leader.

Abby swallows, watching Bert snuffle around. “He didn’t mean it. He was angry and scared and, after Kate, he doesn’t like being scared. He doesn’t blame you for Gibbs, none of us do.”

“I do,” Ziva states, standing and averting her gaze, face stilling into an emotionless mask. Within seconds, she’s gone from human to untouchable Mossad. Abby envies that skill, even as Ziva pauses and furrows her brow.

“What?” Abby asks nervously, bunching her sleeves in her hands.

“Are you injured?” Ziva’s voice is sharp, eyes raking over the coat Abby is wearing as though she can see through it. “You smell of blood.” Abby tenses, and that’s a mistake because Ziva picks up on it immediately and narrows her eyes.

“Bert cut himself this morning,” Abby stutters out, cursing her inability to lie under pressure, and herself for forgetting to cover the scent of her spell-work practise with camphor and bleach before leaving the house. Ziva doesn’t say anything, just nods slowly and leaves, and Abby wonders if the woman can smell the difference between hippo blood and human.

She really hopes she can’t.

 

* * *

 

“You have to leave now.”

Jimmy pauses from where he’s carefully lining up the runes she’d given him to draw onto her cleared living room floor. “I’m not done yet. You can’t do it all yourself.”

Should she tell him that she hasn’t given him the full set of runes, only half? It’s only for a moment that she considers this, before deciding that he’s probably better off without that tidbit of information. The less he knows in the end, the better. “It’ll be fine like that, it’s only a practise run,” she says, trying to smile at him. There’s a dull throbbing behind her eyes and her skin itches constantly, the oily sensation of the illicit magic making her feel permanently nauseous. “I’ll text you when I’m done.”

Jimmy stands slowly with his wings half open, and she recognises the stubborn look in his eyes. He’s about to try and be a gentleman, refusing to let her delve alone into magic she barely understands. Well, she wouldn’t _be_ alone if she could tolerate Mikal’s company for more than ten minutes without wanting to claw her own eyes out.

“Jim, you _can’t_ see,” she cuts him off, seeing the stubborn look fade. “You know what happens if you learn anything you shouldn’t.”

It’s a strange look he shoots her as he picks up his coat and heads to the door, wiping paint-stained fingers on his pants. “Why should you take all the risk?” he snaps over his shoulder, sounding about as mad as she’s ever heard him. It’s an easy enough question to answer. Because she couldn’t stand it if they get caught and he loses everything because of her idea. Because the punishment for this is having their magic stripped from them and a gremlin is nothing without magic, just a shadow. Because… well, who would be surprised that Abigail Sciuto, Goth extraordinaire who’s devoted her life to working with forensics and science, has fallen into necromancy? Inevitable, they’ll all say. Always knew that girl would go wrong.

Better her than him.

 

* * *

 

The spell takes and Abby’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. She’s done it. She’s summoned a spirit from the paths of the dead. A dull, amorphous spirit that seems completely puzzled as to how it’s found itself in her living room, beady eyes gazing around vacantly. But a _spirit_. Abby swallows hard, the rush of the spell heady and uncomfortably exhilarating even with the ever-constant sensation of her magic feeding into the incorporeal form of the chicken-spirit she’s reclaimed.

She suddenly understands completely how people get hooked on this.

The chicken-spirit walks slowly around the confines of the spell circle she’d called it into, then turns its head and looks straight at her with agonised eyes. She gasps, fumbling the thread that ties her to the spirit and feeling it snag and pull viciously towards the creature, draining into it. All at once, it’s almost as though she’s in the circle with the spirit, and she can feel _pain_. Moving quickly as she reverses the spell, the chicken melds into a shapeless form before vanishing. Slumping to the ground and beginning to shudder, the horror of it runs through her.

Trapped. She’d trapped it. It had never done anything to her and she’d taken its soul and brought it back and trapped it like it was _nothing_. And she realises something: she can’t do this. Not for Gibbs, not for anyone, she _can’t_ do this. She’ll just have to find another way.

And probably never eat chicken again.

 

* * *

 

Jimmy’s taken to spending every spare moment in her lab, face always an unhappy mix of concerned and dejected, which is at least some sort of improvement upon the way Ducky has taken to treating her. He looks at her like she’s a stranger to him, and she can’t bear it.

“What happens if they catch the guy who’s teaching you?” Jimmy asks unexpectedly one day. “I mean, you’ve got to have someone teaching you, right? You’re not just teaching it to yourself out of books? Because they banned that for a reason, ever since those Harvard students managed to spread themselves out over eight countries. In twelve pieces.”

Abby doesn’t like talking about Mikal, but she also doesn’t like how worried and thin Jimmy is looking lately. “They won’t catch him… he’s been doing this a long time.”

Jimmy hums and rustles his wings thoughtfully. “But, if they _do._ What if he tells them about you?”

She thinks of the blood oath Mikal had made her take before he’d even considered telling her about anything, the unhappy perception of being tied to him even in such a small way. Even if she wanted to, she can’t talk about it, but neither can he. Some small safety… “He won’t.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re losing weight,” he says another day, the obstinate line back to his mouth.

The concentrated dose of the headache cure she’s making will barely dull the constant headache she’s had for the past two weeks, but she stirs at it anyway. “I didn’t know you were the weight police,” she comments, not waiting for the mixture to cool before downing it and gagging, regretting not using the watermelon flavour she keeps for Tony.

“I can help,” he says softly. She almost throws up the painkillers, knowing what he’s offering.

“If you even think of saying that again.” The headache is making her irritable, “I swear, Jim, I’ll go to Tony about everything.”

He pales. “You know, these spells aren’t meant to be evoked by a single person,” he stammers, expression pleading. “People have _died_.” In response, she just glares at him, unwilling to open her mouth in case she vomits. He takes a deep breath before he speaks again, barely meeting her eyes. “Well… what about a familiar?”

 

* * *

 

She walks into autopsy one day and there’s a child on the table. Jimmy looks up at her with wide eyes behind his spatter-guard. “You should have called, I would have told you not to come down,” he says, and she realises that they’d kept this from her on purpose.

“The slavers?” she asks, looking away from the tiny body on the steel table that dwarfs it. He doesn’t reply, but that’s answer enough.

It’s time to end this.

 

* * *

 

“You’re using my dog as a familiar, I’m not leaving. I’ll sit in another room, I won’t watch or listen, but I’m not leaving.” Jimmy runs a nervous hand over Echo’s curly fur, eyeing the closed door to Abby’s living room. “Is this dangerous?”

“For me or Echo?” Abby is positively shaking from the exhaustion of the pre-spell work she’s been working on all day, making sure her home is sealed enough that no sign of what she’s doing tonight can possibly leak out. She still has to make a familiar link with Echo, and that’s all before trying the insane gamble she has planned…

All she wants to do is sleep.

“For either of you.”

Yes.

“No. We’ll be fine.” Echo will be fine anyway, there’s no way Abby’s going to let anything hurt the dog. She’s a good enough witch to ensure _that,_ at least, no matter what goes wrong. And there’s a _lot_ that can go wrong. “Ready?” she asks the dog, using a trickle of magic to light the candle that will link them. It will burn indefinitely, unless either of them decides to dissolve the relationship and snuffs it out. It’s a wry thought that this will be the cleanest magic she’s used in weeks, and she’s doing it in order to use the darkest she’ll ever cast.

The candle catches, gutters, and, for a moment, Abby thinks that Echo has changed her mind, until it flares to life and suddenly she isn’t alone anymore.

“Did it work?” Jimmy yelps, dancing about anxiously.

_“What you plan tonight is a bad idea, little witch,”_ Echo says, and her voice is older than Abby would have ever expected. _“If it goes wrong, I cannot be sure that I will be able to protect you.”_

She ignores Jimmy and instead focuses her attention on the dog. _“If it works, will he be able to help us find Gibbs?”_

_“There’s no way to be sure. What he did know, he may not remember. Time is fluid for the dead.”_

Abby hisses out a breath, thinking of everything they stand to gain if this works. “We have to try,” she says finally, ignoring Jimmy’s nervous groan.

 

* * *

 

It works.

With Echo as a firm presence to anchor herself to, Abby can throw herself bodily into the spell work, feeling the rush of it through every part of herself. When she finally opens her eyes as the spell takes, she feels more alive than she has in weeks and Jerry Hicks is standing in front of her in the circle drawn from the blood samples she’d taken, scrutinizing her with eyes that are ancient. She opens her mouth to ask him what he’d seen, what he can tell her about the men who’d murdered him, but he beats her to it.

“Where are my children?” he cries in a voice that shatters her resolve instantly, and she fumbles the thread for the second time.

_Oh shit_ , she thinks as the familiar pull drags her in again. It’s stronger, impossible to resist this time, and she drops with the sound of Echo’s barking reverberating around the room.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up and Ducky is standing over her, watching her with solemn eyes. Echo is curled up by her side. “Did I die?” she asks, wiggling her toes experimentally. They don’t _feel_ dead.

Ducky makes a harsh sort of noise, a cross between a growl and a laugh. “No, my dear, but you’re going to wish you did. You’re going to be feeling the aftereffects of that foolhardiness for weeks, and rightly so. One should suffer the pain they inflict upon others, and what you did tonight was _exceptionally_ cruel.”

A dull sort of disconnected pain throbs up her spine and into her skull. “It doesn’t hurt so bad…”

He sits down and his face shifts, making him look old and worn. “I’m helping with that. As much as I believe the pain is deserved, I cannot see you suffer, Abigail. You’re lucky Mr. Palmer was here to call me as soon as it became apparent your spell had failed, otherwise we would not be having this conversation. Or, rather, _you_ would not be having this conversation. I would still be scolding you endlessly.”

Her throat feels swollen shut and she blinks back hot tears. “Are you going to tell the director what I did?”

“No,” he says heavily. “It was wrong, terribly wrong, but you did it for the right reasons. You knew it was wrong, and that’s why it failed. This is not magic for the faint-of-heart to dabble in. I should never have let you leave autopsy that day without you knowing that.”

_“He’s going to help you,”_ Echo says suddenly, her voice fatigued. Abby wonders how much of her life she owes to the dog.

“No more spirits,” Ducky continues. “Let the dead have their much-deserved rest. But the blood-work… yes, I was wrong to let you out of my morgue that day. With the blood-work, we may yet find him. There are spells that will trace a person by their blood, the effect amplified in water. They’ll need to be constantly replenished but, between the three of us, we might just manage it.”

“I thought you said this isn’t magic for the faint-hearted?” she teases. If she doesn’t tease him, then she’s going to start crying. He closes his eyes before he speaks again.

“My dear, I am many things, but faint-hearted has never been one of them.”


	13. Us and the Manticore

Gibbs lies curled nose to tail in the cage that’s contained his life for the past countless months, listening to the lilting song of a bird shift in a gilded cage by the exit. The overseer’s pet. A rare parrot shift, keen-eyed and brightly feathered. She’s one of the few in the complex not sunk in her own misery, free of the endless wait for one slip-up to end in death. Another song joins her, the soft whistles trilling from the cage next to Gibbs. He raises his head, eyeing the young dragon as he leans against the cages, eyes intent and focused on the bird. The iron around the wolf’s neck tingles, reacting with magic in the air. The dragon trills again, the noise seemingly impossible for a human throat to voice, betraying his glamour. Gibbs dozes off with the sound of their music, the only gentle thing he’s experienced in months.

 

* * *

 

For Ducky, there is none of the strain that plagues Abigail when she uses the blood trace they’ve created. She isn’t the type to be able to use dark magic easily, the malignant drain of it destroying her slowly. For him, it’s easy, though brings back torturous memories of a time of his life he’d rather had stayed forgotten. But, it gets results. He spreads himself through the waterways of the city, carefully sending out fragments of his consciousness along the ebb and pull of the currents and feeling the trace kick as it picks up a taste of the target they’d set it on.

Gibbs. Alive.

It’s impossible to tell exactly where the blood is from, filtered through miles of pipes and almost miniscule in the amount, but it narrows it down to a section of city. That’s a start. Now they have confirmation, at least, that he is being kept in the city.

Ducky draws himself back together into corporal form and slips out of the water as a singular being. A racoon snarls in terror and scampers away at the sight of his hump-backed horse shape, water steaming on his flanks. He snaps his teeth at the beast as it scurries away, before shoving the sickening touch of the blood trace off of himself and taking human form.

No. Faint of heart, he is not.

 

* * *

 

The knocks on her door are too light to be Ziva, too demanding to be Timmy, and too rhythmic to be Tony. Abby pads over to it barely awake, actually able to rest properly now that the load of the spell-work is pooled between her, Ducky, and Echo. There’s something to be said for troubles shared.

She opens the door and Mikal is there, peering at her with that anxious neediness that instantly overshadows his good looks. “What are you doing here?” she snaps, holding the door tightly so he can’t shove past into her apartment. How does he even know where she lives?

“I found something,” he says, ducking his eyes shyly behind long hair. “I knew you’d want to see it. It’s about your friend. The one you’re looking for.”

Something in her gut churns, and it’s not her lunch. “How do you know I’m looking for someone?”

He smirks. “I have my ways. And my contacts. I could have helped you better, you know, if you had been honest with me, Baby. But I found out, I always do, and I got this for you because I knew you’d want it.” He holds up a DVD, and she feels the blood drain from her face.

“What is that?”

He oozes past her, slipping easily into her home like smoke, and makes his way towards her TV. “Your friend. He’s making quite a name for himself. This got leaked on the net, it’s wicked awesome.” He slips the DVD in and plays it before she can tell him not to, everything in her screaming at her that she doesn’t want to see this, that she can’t survive watching this. But she can’t look away.

It’s worse than she could have possibly imagined.

 

* * *

 

Tony gets to NCIS in record time, numbly aware that a hysterical phone call from Abby in the middle of the night isn’t exactly something that he can ignore, no matter how pretty the company he’s leaving. He finds her in her lab with Lee and McGee both having beat him there, turning their heads to face him as he saunters in. “Why the early wake up call, Abs?” he asks grumpily, putting on his best sulk-face. A soft noise behind him announces the arrival of Ziva as Abby clicks a button on her computer, tilting her head away and locking her gaze wordlessly on Tony in a soundless plea. He can see the signs of sickness around her mouth and eyes, the grey clamminess that humans always pick up after vomiting. Gross, and worrying. He braces. The screen flickers on, showing a shaky view of a nightmarish creature facing down an indiscernible silver blur. Tony sucks in a shocked breath at the sight, hearing Ziva do the same. A manticore, in DC?

Tony should have stopped being surprised by these things a long time ago, watching as the manticore bares long, arched fangs in a grotesquely human face. Even on the shaky footage, he can see wings bound cruelly to its back and a sting-tipped tail held high.

“Gibbs,” moans someone near his side, and it takes a moment for the knowledge that it’s Ziva to sink in. The manticore lunges, sinking the venomous tip of the tail into the hunched silver form of the werewolf it’s facing. The wolf slumps for a long, terrible moment, and Tony can’t breathe. Eventually, he stands with slow, agonised movements, before rearing and disappearing into a pixelated mass with the manticore. Fighting for his life. The manticore falls and the wolf staggers away, the phone waving about wildly as though the holder is celebrating, before going dark. Tony takes a moment to remember how to be human, overwhelmed with the sudden ferocious desire to walk in there and show every human in that nightmarish place _exactly_ why vampires are feared.

“Track that, Abby,” he says instead, voice emotionless. “McGee, help her. There’s something in that video that will lead us to him. Send a copy to Fornell.”

Tony’s going to bring Gibbs home, and he’s going to _destroy_ the people who’ve taken him.

 

* * *

 

Fornell doesn’t let any of them see what he’s thinking, the anxiousness that has been haunting him since seeing one of his pack bound and forced to fight. He’s the steady one here, the one holding this sinking ship together in the absence of its captain. He’d thought that job was DiNozzo’s, but one look at the curl of the man’s lips reminds Fornell of what he’d let himself forget: DiNozzo might be Gibbs’ tame vampire, but Gibbs isn’t here to hold the leash anymore. And the vampire has clearly just realised that.

There’ll be a bloodbath if they aren’t careful.

“The video is a godsend in disguise,” he says, eyeing the women of the MCRT in his peripheral vision. The human, forgettable. She’ll be of no use in this operation. The other…

“You call it that,” replies DiNozzo, eyes glittering with dark intent. The horrors of that thirty-second clip are still apparent in the room, even with hours separating them from the first viewing. “I call it watching a friend, our friend, be murdered.”

Fornell snorts. “Gibbs isn’t going to go down that easily. You forget, I’ve known the man since before you were even a twinkle on your sire’s fangs. He’s just waiting for us to get our shit together and go get him.” He doesn’t mention the moment when the wolf had slumped to the ground, posture beaten, even the grainy footage showing signs of ruin on the once proud bearing. He doesn’t mention it, because he doesn’t need to. Those that know Gibbs well enough have already seen it for themselves. “We have a contact who can put an undercover agent in a fighting ring he’s affiliated with.” He’s instructs them carefully, knowing that what he’s going to say isn’t going to go down well. “The video gave us an in. We can send someone in who is ‘impressed’ by the footage, willing to strike a deal for the supply of more shifters and beasts for their purposes. Those agents can then access the information banks and find out where Gibbs is being kept. Then, we sweep in, destroying the lot in one fell swoop. Simple.”

There’s silence as they think over what he’d said, and he can see a growing realization in the golem’s eyes. “You’ll need someone who can gain unrestricted access to their networks,” McGee points out, mouth set in a stubborn line. “I’m the best. It has to be me.”

“And me,” DiNozzo says, but Fornell is already shaking his head.

“You’re too recognisable, everyone knows about NCIS’s vampire. No, I was thinking someone a little more… striking.”

The Mossad officer narrows her eyes and smiles coldly. “An Israeli socialite with far too much of Father’s money to spend on American pursuits, with her manservant as protection,” she murmurs. “Elegant. I will be able to offer them exotic shifters. They will not turn me away.”

DiNozzo stands and walks away, posture barely hiding the anger he’s radiating. Fornell follows him, grinning wryly as the vampire slams his hand on the elevator button. Gibbs’ influence is strong. When the elevator grinds to a halt, DiNozzo whirls on Fornell with his fangs out, but he shuts him up with a glare and a simple spoken, “Rule fifteen.”

“How is sending a shifter and a probie into a slaver’s den working as a team?” DiNozzo snaps. There’s a hint of terrible fear in those words, the sound of a man fighting the possibility of losing everything he has left to live for.

“We can hide David’s true form, if your witch is at all capable. And McGee hasn’t been a probie since Ari. You need to trust them to do their jobs, DiNozzo.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

Fornell could say that nothing will go wrong, but they’d both see that as the lie it is. Anything can and might go wrong. “Then we move in and extract them. We’ll have eyes on them the whole time, we’re not abandoning them in there to take their chances.”

DiNozzo closes his eyes, and nods once.

 

* * *

 

“This… this isn’t going to be nice, Ziva.” Abby’s green eyes are worried, but alert. It makes a nice change from the exhaustion from the last few weeks, as though she has managed to shake off whatever has been plaguing her. Or, perhaps, it is hope that has reenergized her.

“No one ever said it would be,” Ziva responds, eyeing the carefully inked runes around her wrists. One surge of Abby’s magic will send them scouring into her skin, becoming invisible as the spells set in. It will make her appear human. But, it will also lock her away from her feline form. It is like having a limb torn away and continuing to feel it itch after the fact. She can reach it if she needs, but it will be painful and immediately destroy her disguise. “Best get it over with,” she says finally, steeling herself. “Like putting on a band-aid, yes?”

“Taking it off, more like,” Abby responds, and casts.

Tony walks up to her after, running a careful finger around her wrist. Abby has done her job well, there is not even a single white line to show where the spells were evoked. “Ziva,” he says softly, voice pitched low to reach her ears only. “I don’t apologise often. Gibbs doesn’t exactly encourage it… but I need to apologise now. For how I’ve been acting towards you.”

He is scared for her. He hides it well, but she can sense it on him. “There is nothing to apologise for,” she responds. “Grief makes us do strange things.”

She thinks of Ari and the path his grief had lead him down.

 “I will have McGee’s back,” she reassures him, wondering if he is thinking of her last slip-up.

He smirks. “I know. And we’ll have yours. Don’t make us have to come fetch you.”

 

* * *

 

Ziva looks stunning, casually dressed in the manner of a wealthy woman with few worries out to have a bit of fun, with a touch of businesslike manners to her attire. She shakes her hair down before turning to face Tim as he slinks in self-consciously, averting his eyes from hers. She makes a soft noise and, if he was still wearing his glamour, he’d have flushed. He hates looking like this, looking like… a monster.

“I do not like you like this,” she says, and his heart sinks. It’s one thing to think it…

“Yeah, it’s not pretty,” he snaps. “But you know, we were designed for productivity, not looks.”

There’s a long moment of silence and then her hand touches his, tightening on the cool clay with an easy familiarity. “I did not mean without your glamour, Tim,” she tells him, turning his hand over so it’s palm down. “I mean with your sigil hidden. It is wrong. I do not like the reminder that there are those who would take your freedom from you.”

He watches as she runs her hand on the smooth, polished surface of the back of his hand, smiling as she avoids touching the darker swathes of ownership tattoos Abby has painted onto his arm to replace them. They aren’t real, but to anyone who isn’t looking too hard, they _feel_ real. “Well, at least I have the option of washing it off at the end of this,” he says heavily, thinking of those who aren’t so lucky. “I have my freedom.”

Ziva nods. “Let us go and give Gibbs his freedom back.”


	14. Tony and the Necromancer

“Do you think Tim and Ziva are okay?” Abby is bent over her bench, hands moving deftly as she runs tests on the evidence they’d had sent up to retest.

Tony yawns and tosses another halved apricot into Bert’s swamp, watching the fruit disappear under the water with a single gape of the creature’s mouth. “They’re not even there yet, they’re still being debriefed with Fornell. Unless Ziva pissed him off and he ate her, I’m sure they’re fine.”

Abby snorts, shaking her head and setting the gold broomsticks she has threaded through her pigtails glittering in the bright lights. “Ziva would kick Fornell’s ass, no contest.”

While she’s distracted, he slips his hand into his pocket to anxiously check his phone for a message from the FBI agent. Fornell had been adamant that Tony stay out of the initial set-up of the undercover op, stating that he didn’t need him mother-henning the two NCIS agents. Tony disagrees, but hadn’t pushed the matter. He’s going to be there from the moment they walk in the door, staked out nearby in case something goes wrong. And he isn’t going to leave until they’re out. Wild horses couldn’t drag him away.

Abby straightens and looks at him, mouth twitching into half a grin before it slips off her face and she sniffs deeply. “Do you smell that?” she asks, green eyes widening.

He takes a deep breath, the scent of apricots from the bowl in front of him overwhelming. Apricots and… “Almonds?”

Abby moves faster than he would ever have expected her to be capable, conjuring bubbles of air around their heads with a complex hand movement and shoving him bodily towards the exit. Tony yelps, his ears popping with the unfamiliar sensation of the bubble around his head. “Cyanide gas!” she cries, slamming the door shut and hitting the button to seal her lab off. Tony flinches as klaxons sound, the alarm lights flashing wildly and alerting everyone in the building to a biological danger in the lab.

“Bert?” he asks, still trying to process what had just happened.

She gives him a strange look. “Doesn’t have a respiratory system. He’s a stuffed animal. Tony, the coke I was testing was bad. That was a set-up.”

Tony rests his feet against the wall as people begin to buzz around, faces concerned. And he puzzles that through, before asking, “Abby? Did someone just try to kill you?”

She blinks, looking startled. “I… I think so?”

 

* * *

 

“Abby doesn’t have accidents,” Tony says, bristling. Director Shepard raises a carefully shaped eyebrow at him from across his desk, tapping her foot against the floor thoughtfully.

“Abby also doesn’t have enemies,” she says. “It’s not like we’re talking about _you_.”

He frowns at her. A year ago, he would have risen to the bait, been ready with a cutting retort. Gibbs would have been there to redirect him back onto task. Since it’s not a year ago and everything is different now, he ignores the jibe. “The crime-scene that gave us the doctored coke? It was a set-up. Someone wanted her dead.”

Shepard’s lips twitch, barely retaining an angry snarl at the idea of someone reaching into the heart of her agency to strike at one of her agents. “Do you want me to pass this to Balboa?” she asks instead. “You’re two heads down, and due to join the FBI with their op in three hours.”

Tony thinks of Ziva and McGee about to move into one of the biggest takedowns of their careers, with the entire formidable force of the FBI wolves at their backs. Possibly emerging with their missing boss.

It would be good if they had a living witch to return home to.

“This case is ours,” he replies shortly. “Lee and I are a crack team, ma’am, we’ve got this.”

Jenny nods. “Make sure you do.”

 

* * *

 

“Agent DiNozzo?” Lee looks up from her computer with a nervous expression. “You might want to take a look at this. Does the name Mikal Mawher ring any bells?”

Tony glances up at her. “No. Should it?”

“He’s placed over two hundred calls to Abby in the last three months. And…”

“And what, Lee?”

“She had a restraining order against him. It was removed last month, by her request.”

Tony stiffens. Uh oh. Abby, what have you _done?_ “See Agent Balboa and take someone to bring him in.” Lee blinks, standing slowly and reaching down to her drawer to get her weapon.

“Where are you going?” she asks, watching him as he moves briskly towards autopsy.

“To see our witch about a man.”

 

* * *

 

“It wasn’t Mikal. He’s weird, but he’s not creepy weird. Okay, he is creepy weird, but he’s not creepy murdering weird. Well…”

Tony stares at her, frowning as she noticeably averts her gaze from his. “You’re not really selling his case to me. Why didn’t I know about this guy?”

“I wanted him restrained, Tony. Not exsanguinated.”

Ducky taps his fingers restlessly against the desk. “Why on earth did you remove the restraining order, Abigail? This does not sound like the kind of gentleman you would want in your life.”

Abby looks mulish, opening her mouth to defend herself without actually saying anything.

“Abigail?” Ducky prompts again.

Silence. The witch blinks, coughs, and shakes her head, swallowing hard. “It’s not him. He’s not… why would he try to kill me here? He knows where I live and…” Her mouth clamps shut again. Tony doesn’t miss the disconcerted look Ducky shoots their friend, or the way Palmer’s face starts to twitch as though he’s trying control his micro-expressions and overcompensating terribly.

“We’re picking him up,” Tony warns her, listening to the sudden rapid hammering of her heart. She’s nervous. _No,_ he corrects himself, watching the way her throat moves as she swallows again. _She’s terrified._

 

* * *

 

“This is ridiculous. I would never hurt Abby. I love her. I loved her. I just got a little overboard, okay? I’m better now, I’m in therapy. I’m golden, man.” Mawher’s eyes flicker around the interrogation room, sweat beading on his forehead. “We’re even friends again, we’re close, you know? Like, real close again.”

Tony leans forward, smiling widely. “Close? Because when a girl files a restraining order against me, _Mike_ ¸ close isn’t generally the word I would use to describe my relationship with them.” The room reeks of sweat and something bitter, something that’s oddly familiar to Tony’s nose. He’s smelled it before, recently.

Mawher scrubs a nervous hand over his mouth, rubbing hard enough to leave a red mark on his upper lip. “Yeah, close, you know. She took that restraining order off. She knows I’ve changed, wants to see me again. We’ve been spending time together, me and her.”

Tony snarls. “Hey! There is no you and her! Got it?”

The change in the man’s bearing is instant. Mawher’s head snaps up, his own mouth curving unpleasantly. “She tell you that? Because it’s a lie. You have no idea what there is between us. No idea. We are more than you can ever imagine.”

Tony’s ears pop with the sudden change in pressure in the room as the anti-magic spells in the walls react with Mawher’s sudden surge of power. “Yeah well, you just tried to cast magic in a federal building without a permit,” Tony says, not breaking eye contact. “So, you’re not going anywhere for a while, Mikey-moo.” He stands, ignoring the furious snarl of the man, and strides to the exit, pausing with his hand on the door. “Oh, and Mawher? Once you get out of here, you ever go near Abby again… you won’t need to imagine what I’m capable of.”

 

* * *

 

Lee slides into the elevator with him as he smacks the button for autopsy, intending to go down and tell Abby exactly what he thinks of her taste in men. Without a word, she hits the stop button and turns to face him, expression obstinate. “Agent DiNozzo, we need to talk,” she says.

“If this is about you thinking Abby is a mole …” he begins, his tone a warning.

She charges forth: “Mawher has been spending a lot of time with Abby recently. He says several nights a week, trying to use that as an alibi.”

Tony hisses to himself. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Abby isn’t as smart as he’d thought. “I’ll deal with it, Lee. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t behind the attack.”

“Mawher’s a necromancer.”

His heart twists in his chest, almost trying to jump out with shock. Speaking through a suddenly dry mouth, he chokes out the next words, “You better not be about to imply what I think you’re about to imply…”

Lee drops her gaze, falling silent. Tony’s mind whirs, every iota of him trying to discount the idea out of hand. Unfortunately, Gibbs has trained him better than that. Her exhaustion. The acrid scent of her skin and magic— _Mikal’s scent matches that—_ , her furtiveness. Her bizarre behaviour in autopsy. Enforced silence.

A blood oath.

Tony reacts before he can think his actions through, hand suddenly gripping Lee’s shoulder tight enough to bruise, face lowered to hers and fangs out. She squeaks in surprise, putting a hand against his chest and trying to push him away. “You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, you understand?” His voice is ice, and she freezes, pulse hammering.

“Tony,” she gasps. “Agent DiNozzo, your hand. You’re… hurting me.”

He lets go, stepping back with his head reeling. Thinking, _how could she do this to herself? To our team? This is the end of everything._

“I have no intention upon telling anyone,” Lee says, flinching as she caresses her shoulder gingerly. “You forget, I saw that video too. I know why she’s doing this. When Agent Balboa arrested Mawher, he resisted. His shirt rode up, there’s a tattoo on his hip, the necromancer guild symbol. That’s enough to get a warrant to enter his home.” She straightens and, for the first time, Tony can see the backbone that had gotten her into NCIS in the first place. “I understand what she’s doing and why she’s doing it, but I can’t be a part of it.”

He blinks, confused. “Part of what?” Does she think he’s going to condone this?

“A part of whatever you have to do to make this go away,” she murmurs, gaze skittering away as she gently presses the stop button to start the elevator up again. “I’ll be handing in a request for a transfer out of the MCRT, as soon as Agent McGee and Officer David return.”

Then, she’s gone, sidling past him to exit the space and disappearing into the office. Tony sighs, feeling the impending return of the stress headache that’s been plaguing him.

He probably could have handled that better.

 

* * *

 

The heavily-armoured magical tactics team turn to face him as Tony strides up to them, face grim and chest emblazoned with the NCIS acronym on his vest. “We have reason to believe the suspect in custody has ties to necromancy,” he warns them, vividly aware of the dangers that come with an unprepared task force sent into a mage’s home without the mage’s permission. “So you guys know better than me what to look out for.”

The task force leader, a slim man who stands barely to Tony’s shoulder and who would look more at home teaching than leading a federal raid, stands straight and calls out in a carrying voice that Tony envies, “Right, lads, you know what that means. You take any injury, right down to a papercut, you get out of there ASAP. Be on the lookout for summoned creatures, or anything that looks like it was once taking a dirt nap. Mages, neutralize the area and clear it of _any_ spell, charm, curse, anything you sense.”

Balboa steps up beside Tony as the tactics team take their positions. “This the guy who tried to finish off Sciuto?” he rumbles in his slow, deep voice. “Necromancy in DC… could this case have gotten any messier?”

Tony shows a smile he doesn’t feel. “Look on the bright side. After this, there’ll be one less necromancer in DC.”

A snort. “These things have a way of spreading, DiNozzo. Where there’s one, there’s many.”

The raid begins. It takes the mages ten minutes to dismantle the layers of spellwork around Mikal’s home and clear the place out of anything that even hints towards an unpleasant curse for any of them clumsy enough to stumble into it. Tony takes a moment before moving in to check his cell, the regular updates from Fornell on his agents’ status reassuring in their promptness. He should be there, but this is more important. They’ll understand.

Gibbs will understand.

**> T. Fornell: all quiet. Z.success. extract in 26hr if all goes to plan.**

Forty-eight hours. That’s how long the FBI have given the two agents to find the information they need and get out; twenty-two hours have already passed. They aren’t risking two more federal agents to the slavers. If they haven’t gotten the information on Gibbs by then, the FBI is going in guns blazing.

There will be casualties.

Tony closes his eyes for a moment, cursing. He should be _there_ , damnit. He should be on their sixes in case something goes wrong. Instead, he’s cleaning up after the world’s most neurotic necromancer and trying not to think about whether he’s going to betray everything he stands for by covering up another one.

He has to talk to Abby first.

“Special Agent DiNozzo?” someone calls. Tony looks up, meeting the eyes of the tactical team’s leader, his face grim. “You might want to come see this.”

He follows and regrets it. The smell is overpowering, and Tony gags helplessly when it hits him. Around him, green-faced task force officers cover their mouths and noses, eyes watering.

“Shielded room in the centre of his apartment,” the leader says, looking unperturbed by the stench. “We cracked it open, found this.” Tony peers into the room, one of the mages holding an arm out to make sure he doesn’t go past the threshold in case of uncleared dangers. The room is liberally covered with the most intricate linking of runes that Tony’s ever seen, concentric patterns that blur and weave in his vision in a complicated series of optical illusions. In the centre of the runes, what looks like the rotting, putrid corpse of what had once been a griffin, nothing left but desiccated skin stretched over the frame of the skeleton.

“He was making a bane,” Tony whispers, goosebumps shivering up his spine at the thought of that loose in DC. Mindless and controlled completely by their resurrector, their cry paralyses their victims with fear while the creature feeds on them. Their creators share in the energies of the ones killed by the beast, drawing off the force of their deaths. “How close was he to succeeding?”

One of the mages pulls a face. “Nowhere near. Not a spark of life in it, but not for lack of trying.”

Tony makes up his mind. There isn’t a sniff of Abby anywhere around this hellhole. She’d never have gotten caught up deliberately in something of this magnitude.

She isn’t going down for this.

 

* * *

 

“Is there anything that can tie you to him besides your relationship?” Tony snaps, sealing himself in autopsy with Abby, Ducky, and Palmer.

“No, nothing,” Abby exclaims, shaking her head. “I was careful, Tony.”

“Not careful enough,” he says, restraining the urge to throttle her. “Abby, what were you _thinking_? Do you have any idea what will happen if even a sniff of suspicion comes your way? Lee—”

“Michelle won’t talk,” Palmer says, long ears flicking. “She knows Abby did it for Gibbs.”

“No suspicion will fall on her, Anthony,” Ducky adds, “because she spent no time alone with him. The nights that Mawher has stated he was in Abigail’s company, he must have been mistaken. She was with me, assisting in Mother’s care. A very disturbed individual, as his apartment showed.”

Abby blanches, eyes widening. “Ducky, don’t you dare! They’re going to know you’re lying.”

“Have you actually ever been to his home?” Tony asks her. She shakes her head adamantly. “Abby, he had a _bane_ in his house. He had black-market blood and organs in his fridge. He had a _shrine_ to you set up in his bedroom, a whole wall of just pictures of you. There’s no one who’s going to believe a word he says when it comes to you.”

Her eyes well up with tears and he looks away, uncomfortable. He won’t tell her what else they found in that apartment.

 

* * *

 

“You think stripping me of my magic and throwing me in a cell is going to stop the necromancers from reclaiming their rightful place in society?” Mawher asks Tony as he watches the FBI prepare to lead him away. “I’ll be an icon to them.”

“You’re not going to be their martyr,” Tony replies. “We found the gun, we found the suicide note you wrote in Abby’s handwriting, and we found the casting circle to try and tie her spirit to you permanently. No one is ever going to want their cause associated with your name.”

Mawher twists in the grasp of the agent leading him away, enraged. “No! I wouldn’t ever have hurt her! We were going to be together, you can’t stop us.”

“Try to contact her again, and I will. Permanently.”

 

* * *

 

The phone rings as Tony slides into his car seat, intending to head straight for the stake-out where Fornell is monitoring his agents. “What, Fornell?”

“We got a feed from McGee and David. They’ve requested immediate extraction.”

Tony’s heart does a strange, uneasy flip in his chest. “They’ve found Gibbs?”

“Not quite.”


	15. Gibbs and the Dragon

_“Leroy.”_ The call is soft, but insistent. _“Leroy.”_

Gibbs opens one eye and squints through the bars at the round, pale face of the dragon. The iron collar around his neck prickles uncomfortably at the slight magic use, a sensation that is rapidly becoming familiar to him over the past week as the dragon continues practising his whistling calls. Not much is known about dragon magic, them being rare and elusive aside from their curious propensity to take an almost perfect glamour and wander around human settlements, but Gibbs is starting to suspect a lot of their magic is cast verbally.

_“What?”_ he sends back, voice gruff with sleep. He stands and stretches, feeling a twinge from the tight scarring on his hindquarters where a recent healing had struggled to take.

_“Watch,”_ says the boy, tilting his head to the side with an intense expression and opening his mouth to whistle shrilly. Gibbs flattens his ears in shock as the noise hums through the room, animal heads turning to stare at them from every direction. In the sudden silence that follows the end of the call, they all hear the click of the parrot’s cage opening. _“They’re going to take me soon,”_ the dragon whispers as Gibbs watches the parrot bob her head in confusion at the open door. _“They think they’ve hidden me for long enough, that all my fight is gone. They forget what I am, just like she forgets what she is. She would prefer the safety of her cage to the uncertainty of freedom.”_

The parrot reaches out a nervous claw and pulls the cage door shut again without engaging the lock, avoiding Gibbs gaze as he blinks at her. He doesn’t really blame her. Freedom is a frightening prospect for someone who’s spent so much of her life in a cage.

 

* * *

 

The dragon is gone when Gibbs wakes up a day later, the faint scent of a reptile and the scratched marks of months of communication the only signs he was ever here at all.

They remove his collar later that day, ready to fight him again.

_“Did you even say thank you?”_ he sends to the parrot shift in the time between them taking the collar off and coming to take him to his match.

_“What’s there to thank him for?”_ replies the female voice he’d heard when he was first captured. A lifetime ago. _“He’s given me the illusion of freedom. What am I supposed to do with that?”_

Isn’t it obvious? She has more now than any of the rest of them do. He answers, _“Cling to it.”_

 

* * *

 

It’s really only a matter of time before a fight spirals out of control. In the end, it’s Ducky’s voice that floats back to him as it happens: _“You know how the two of us are about women, Jethro. Relics of a gentler time.”_

Gibbs is appalled when he steps into the pit and the three wolf shifters from the cages up the aisle from him are pacing together in a tight group, eyes narrowed. He’s never exchanged a word with them, but their scent is as familiar to him as DiNozzo’s would be. More so, these days. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember the people who’d made up his life before. Two males, one female. All healthy, aside from the strain of stress and layered injuries. The female related to one of the other wolves. They’re a family, a pack. And, right now, they’re his opponents.

_“No hard feelings, werewolf,”_ one of the males sends, baring his fangs and lunging, the other two circling around to flank him. Gibbs knows all their tricks; he was once in a pack too. They’ll try to bring him down, go for the belly and the throat. It’s a dance, one they’ve perfected. He outclasses them in every way. They can’t beat him, and they know it, but they’re not going to go down easily. If their captors think that they threw the match on purpose, they’ll all be in for a world of pain.

Gibbs is good at ending fights quickly now.

Except this time; he knocks the female’s paws out from under her and goes for the bite that will take her out of the match, and she twists around and looks up at him with Shannon’s eyes. He freezes. _“I have two daughters at home, and I don’t even know how old they are anymore,”_ she says suddenly, as though she’s seen her death in his jaws. He hesitates, and the other two wolves are on him, taking him down while his centre of gravity is off and worrying at his throat and neck. Their smaller fangs struggle to bite through the thick ruff of fur and skin, but they cause damage enough.

He sees teeth flashing towards his eye, and reacts instinctively.

Limping to the other side of the pit, he turns back with a rumbling growl and shakes blood from his fur, almost quaking with the adrenaline of his near miss. Another win.

But at what cost?

 

* * *

 

The healer spends hours in the cage with the wolf shifts that night, two of them huddled together against the back of the enclosure watching with wide eyes, and the third a silent form stretched out across the floor. Their owner paces in front of the cage, ranting furiously. He’s a blustering, red faced man and past-Gibbs wouldn’t have spared him the time of day.

“Why are you even matching him against shifters?” the man whines, turning on the other man who stands silent watching the proceedings. “He’s your money-maker, right? So make some money off him! The odds are too stacked, you’re barely making a pittance and he’s too vicious. Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost me to replace this one? They won’t be as effective as two!” Gibbs tries to close his eyes and shut it out, the disconnection he’d adopted from the aftereffects of his fights impossible to sustain with the evidence of his monstrousness right in front of him. A shadow flickers over him and he looks up into the eyes of the other man, tall and dark-eyed.

“Perhaps we have just the thing,” the man says without his expression changing.

 

* * *

 

The healer does his best, but the wolf shifter dies that night. Gibbs cowers in the corner of his cage and turns his head away from the low, grieved howls of the remaining two wolves. It reminds him too much of Kate.

Every time he glances over, the dead shifter’s sister is watching him blankly and there’s something in her eyes that shows him everything he’s become.

 

* * *

 

The offer of an end to it all is almost a relief. Gibbs feels the sharp sting of the manticore’s tail slam into his ribs, the instant numb wave that spreads from the site of the puncture testimony to the rapid spread of the venom. Its effect is instantaneous. His legs crumple under him and he sags to the ground, feeling his heart beginning to slow as the paralysis spreads. For a single, lasting moment, he lets himself savour the idea of just laying down and letting the poison and fangs of the manticore finish the job. An escape from the endless fights, the pain, the slow but steady feeling of his humanity trickling away day by day. He’ll see Shannon and Kelly again.

He closes his eyes.

And opens them again moments later, heart thudding dully. If he dies here, he’ll never hug Abby again, or share a steak with Tony, or a story with Ducky. They’ll never know what happened to him, how he died, or how he fought so hard to survive and go home to them.

Tony is still looking for him. And, if Gibbs dies here, Tony will never stop looking.

He pulls himself up with a shaky roar, ignoring the pain that tears through his chest. He owes it to his team to live. When he finally lets himself fall, it’s only because the beast under him is dead.

 

* * *

 

His world becomes a hazy maze of pain and voices filtered from miles away, calling down to him. They don’t replace his collar because the healer spends every moment by his side trying to burn the toxin out of him, but Gibbs takes no solace from the freedom from the cruel ring of iron. It just adds to the voices that haunt him.

_“Don’t you die, Leroy,”_ says a voice that could be the parrot’s, or Jenny’s. _“You’ve got work left to do.”_

_“Just resting my eyes, Jen,”_ he sends back groggily. _“Franks would have my hide if he thought I was sleeping on the job.”_

“Time to come home, Jethro,” Ducky says another day, running a cool hand over his muzzle. Gibbs licks it gently, whining and thumping his tail at the sight of his old friend. “Anthony has done admirably without you, but he needs you more than he needs a promotion.”

He goes to answer but suddenly it’s night and Ziva is instead sitting in front of him with her legs crossed and eyes glittering yellow. “If you become a monster, I have your back,” she tells him intently, holding her weapon close. “Just like Ari.”

_“I’m not a monster,”_ he tries to reassure her. _“I’m not Ari.”_

_“We are what they’ve made us,”_ someone replies from nearby, their voice dull.

 

* * *

 

“We have to move him. That video that got leaked could send them straight here and, after taking out that manticore, this one’s a goldmine. I won’t lose him to the feds.”

“He’s too weak. I can save him, maybe, but if you move him there might not be much I can do.”

“Better dead than freed. We move him tomorrow. If he dies, I’ll destroy you.”

 

* * *

 

“They’re coming for you, Boss,” Tony tells him that night, running his hand over his ears. For a moment, when Gibbs opens his eyes, Tony’s face flickers and becomes the healer’s, just as concerned but without any of the love layered in the expression. “I’m not going to make it to get you out this time.”

_“You’ll find me again,”_ Gibbs reassures him. _“You’ll always find me.”_

“You didn’t find me,” Zach says, tucking his knees to his chin and blinking back tears. “You let them take me, and you never found me.”

Kate leans over him and the smell of her perfume is both strong and achingly reminiscent of days past. “You’re not the only one he lost, Zach. I took two bullets for him, and it still wasn’t enough. I had to take a third.” She pushes her hand against the festering wound left by the sting and presses hard, spiralling him down into blackness, screaming as he goes.

 

* * *

 

At one point, he opens his eyes and they’re half walking, half dragging him through the complex and there’s the faintest hint of desert on the air. He fights them with a snarling, furious rage, calling out for someone he isn’t even sure is real anymore until they shock him into submission and he drops with her name still frozen in his throat.

_“Cling to that spirit, Leroy,”_ are the last words he hears before he passes out again.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up in a new place, new scents and sounds overwhelming him. A consuming thirst is burning him from the inside out, feeling his hind legs drag uselessly on the cement under him as he tries to get to the water bowl. They might not have managed to kill him, but they’ve done enough damage that he isn’t sure he can come back from this.

When he finishes the water, lapping anxiously at the empty bowl to get the last few drops, he slinks to the corner of the cage and hunkers down. Watching. There aren’t as many shifters in here as in the last two places he’s been. Instead, a griffin slashes at the floor of its enclosure with a harsh screech and something behind him lets off a rhythmic throbbing grunt that makes his bones ache. The entire place reeks of old blood and barely restrained magic. Wherever he is, he doubts he’ll be leaving here. The creatures surrounding him all have one quality in common: they’re supremely rare. A fortune in magical creatures. Alive, they’ll bring in crowds to the fights drawn by the promise of viewing beasts from picture books and films. Dead, necromancers will pay out the nose to harvest their remains. He’s as deep into the slaving ring as it’s possible to get. Not even Tony could possibly find him. He shudders and tries to draw from foggy memories of the trip here, anything that could hint to the possibility of rescue.

Ziva. He’d smelled Ziva. Which means that she’s in the complex, caught in the same trap that’s devoured him. He’d grieve that, but he’s too tired. The Gello had gotten them all in the end. There’s no escaping the Gello.

Kelly had been right to be afraid.

This time, it’s him who howls, haunted by the image of a proud cheetah bloodied and still on the floor of the pit.

 

* * *

 

After that, Tony is a permanent companion in his fevered captivity.

“They’re scared of you, Boss,” he points out one day, pulling a face at the inhabitants of the surrounding cages. “You’re as weak as a kitten and they’re scared of you.”

_“They’re scared of death, and I stink of it.”_

Tony brings his palm down gently on the back of his skull in a mockery of his Gibbs-slap and, for a single second, Gibbs can almost feel the fur ruffle with the breeze of the movement. “But you’re not dying, are you? Because we’re coming for you, Boss.”

_“You’re not here now.”_

“Don’t be impatient. We had things to do.”

It doesn’t take long for his friendly banter to slow to just repeated iterations of the promise to come for him, as Gibbs’ brain struggles to continue the illusion of his presence. Eventually, he stops talking at all, just watches Gibbs with a solemn expression.

_“I’ve never watched a James Bond movie,”_ he goads his senior agent one day, desperate for a reaction.

Tony doesn’t reply.

 

* * *

 

“He’s not sound,” Tony says, waking him up from a fitful sleep and standing over him, touching his side cautiously. “I told you moving him was a bad idea.”

“And I told you what you have to lose if he dies. He’s not missing the fight tomorrow, I’ve got too much riding on it for this sack of shit to lie down and die on me before it.”

“There’s nothing I—”

“Declare him sound. He’s fighting.”

Tony’s eye twitches and he shoots Gibbs an apologetic, trapped look. It’s an expression that the real Tony has never worn, and Gibbs blinks in surprise at seeing it sit so oddly on the familiar face. Suddenly, Tony is gone and the healer is there instead, mouth twisted miserably. “He’s sound,” he grits out between clenched teeth, eyes never leaving the broken wolf.

Gibbs misses DiNozzo.

 

* * *

 

_“What’s wrong with you?”_ screeches a voice in his head, and he shakes himself awake to find himself standing in a wide pit with a nightmare in front of him. The crowd around him screams, worked up into a bloodthirsty frenzy, and Gibbs wonders why they’re so excited when it’s obvious how this is going to end. _“What happened to you?”_ snaps the voice again, young and pained and terrified. Pleading, just like Zach had before they’d taken him away. _“We can get out of this, but you need to snap out of it!”_

Gibbs raises his muzzle to face the dragon. The long, emerald-green, serpentine form is unfamiliar, but the expression peering out of the narrow deer-like face is every inch the young boy’s. He gives the same advice he’d been given so long ago. _“Don’t hold back, or they’ll hurt us both,”_ he tells him gently. He’s still bigger than the young dragon, but his legs shake under him and he knows they can all see the wasted condition of his coat and muscles.

_“I’m not fighting you,”_ the dragon cries, rearing up onto narrow legs and whistling in rage, scales flashing red. _“They hurt you, they hurt you! Those bastards, I’ll kill them!”_

Gibbs settles onto his haunches, letting his refusal to fight be clear. Enough is enough. No more pain. Not for anyone else but him. And the pain comes as expected, everything they’d warned it would be.

The dragon screeches in agony, scales glowing, and his screams bring flames that turn the world white-hot.


	16. Ziva and the Parrot

“We were delighted to receive your request to view our facilities, Miss…?”

Ziva smiles charmingly, allowing herself to stand closer to the man than is strictly necessary. He is the type with whom flattery will go far, she can already tell from a cursory examination. And the slim fitting outfit she is wearing will not hurt those efforts. “Tali. Just Tali, is fine. My father was very excited to send me, he has heard great things about your operation.”

The man nods quickly, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. McGee stands behind her, silent and hulking. Unlike those around her, she is not unnerved by his natural form. There is a dignity to his polished features that she finds pleasing. The man does not even spare him a glance. “Yes, yes. We have been making leaps and bounds, and we have some truly exciting programs going on. Real money-makers. With your father’s assistance, we can expand our network globally and then the tangible rewards will start rolling in!”

She knows that, even as they speak, there will be people behind the scenes busily checking and rechecking every minute detail of her alibi and her ‘father’s’ credentials, making sure she is who she says she is. They will not be disappointed. The FBI’s computer technician had been flawless in creating her false background. Even Mossad would have been hard pressed to do better.

“If you would like to follow me, I can show you to your quarters. We have luxurious living spaces for those of our more exclusive clientele who travel to see our presentations, and I’m sure you’d like to rest before we show you around.”

Ziva nods, the chance to see more of the facility high on her list of priorities. They might now be closer to Gibbs than they have been in months, and she cannot shake off the anxious need to do _something_. “Follow,” she says indifferently to McGee, who pauses ever so slightly before picking up her bags and treading steadily after them. Uneasy at the hesitation, she eyes the man who is leading them, but he had not noticed the misstep. This time.

They will need to be more careful.

It is not long before they are shown to their quarters. Checking that the suite is clear of bugs is the work of seconds, McGee glancing about with his eyes glowing deeply before telling her it is clear.

“You need to respond faster to my instructions,” she warns him, checking the windows and vents for escape routes. “If you hesitate, they will suspect. There are no free golems in Israel.”

Removing McGee’s ability to form facial expressions with the elimination of his glamour only makes him easier to read, taking away all the uncertainty that comes with a human face. His eyes flicker, the magical glow that forms them turning cold and angry. “Sorry. I guess I just haven’t had the misfortune of having practise at being a slave.”

She regards the painting that decorates one wall distastefully, a pack of hounds pulling down a fox. The fox’s face is human. “If only Gibbs could be so lucky,” she says.

 

* * *

 

The office is large and airy with no trace of what Ziva knows is hidden below the innocuous surface. Their guide sits in front of her, rifling through the folder of pictures of exotic shifters she had been given to tempt them with. McGee is silent against the wall, eyes dimmed to a low flicker, looking almost as though he is asleep. Ziva knows better.

“These are fantastic,” the man preens, nodding in delight as he pauses on a picture of a lion shift mid-snarl. “We lose shifters the most out of all of our creatures, so we need a steady supply. I see you have access to mainly large cats.”

Ziva smiles, running a finger across the glossy face of the lion. “I always find that in this business, felines are best. They are much more… vicious when crossed.”

In that moment, she thinks of Ari.

He nods again. She begins to wonder if he is actually one of those ridiculous bobble-head toys, such as the one that Abby has in her lab. “Oh yes, and they’re so much easier to contain. Solitary beasts for the most part, no worries about friends or family coming looking. Not to mention, absolutely relentless. The canines always give up before the felines do.”

_Not this time,_ Ziva thinks to herself. _Gibbs would never give up._

“When can we see the products?” she asks instead. “I wish to inspect the facilities before committing. We have a lot resting on this deal, as you can imagine.”

He pauses in his shuffling again, pulling out a picture of her own cheetah shift standing proudly atop a stage, fur gleaming. “Not until this afternoon, I’m afraid, we’re having a bit of a transport issue in the storage facility at the moment. Necessary personnel only, you understand. ”

“Is there an issue with the smaller shifts?” she questions, seeing him eyeballing her cat form.

He looks up and blinks, before fixing her with a smirk that makes her feel oily. “Oh no, we’ve had a couple of cheetahs in the past. They’re very delicate, don’t do too well in the fights, but they’re great for getting the bigger beasts’ blood up, you know, as bait. We normally keep a supply of young or small shifters for that purpose. Sometimes, our clientele just want to see blood, and we can’t disappoint the clientele. Of course, you’d understand that.”

“Of course,” she replies, feeling the hair prickle in anger on the back of her neck. _The only beast here is you_ , she thinks at the man, wishing she had claws to rake down his sycophantic face.

It will be her pleasure to be the ‘bait beast’ that brings them to their knees.

 

* * *

 

Ziva had thought she was ready for this. She has seen it before, after all, on the day she had failed to save Gibbs.

She had been wrong.

It takes every inch of her training to not let her composed mask slip when she walks into the first room of cages on the heels of the man who has been showing them around. For once, she is thankful that her sense of smell is limited by the spells Abby has used to hide her shifting. The sight is bad enough.

“Is there a system to the pens?” she asks, locking gazes with a tattered looking bobcat that furiously bares its fangs at her. “These all seem to be, what did you call them? ‘Bait’?”

“Yes, these are the smaller creatures, younger, weaker, whatever. They don’t earn us much.”

There is a flicker of something almost familiar out of the corner of her eye and Ziva has to force herself not to whip her head around, instead turning it slowly. The Australian Shepherd pup stares back at her with dull brown eyes, listless. _Zach_ , she thinks, just barely stopping herself from stepping towards the pen. Behind her, McGee tenses.

“She’s not Zach,” he murmurs. She stops, taking a deep breath to compose herself before turning back to the man leading them. He is still chattering away, not having noticed her slip-up. She is out of practise at being who she is not. Working with Gibbs’ team has made her entirely too comfortable in her own skin.

“Where are the real fighters?” she forces herself to ask. “I have no interest in these paltry animals.”

Their guide smiles widely, flashing over-white teeth. It reminds her almost of Tony, a mockery of his easy grin. But, she knows, they could not be more opposite if they tried. This man would face DiNozzo and call him a soulless creature.

Ziva can’t muster the capacity to appreciate that irony.

But the day is not over yet, not even close. They have not found Gibbs. They have not found any leads. And the tour continues. The pen where the fighters are kept is worse. The only comfort she can take from it is that this room, at least, holds no children. She peers down into a cage holding two skinny wolves, huddled together and shivering. “These two do not appear to be well. Is this how you keep all of your beasts? They would not put up a good fight in such condition.”

The man shrugs. He does not care. Callous, and a bad businessman. Those with nothing to live for do not fight for their lives. “They had a third, but there was an incident. Their sponsor will organize a replacement, no doubt. The rest are much more impressive.”

Impressive is one word for the cold, calculating eyes that watch her from every corner of the room. There is no cringing or cowering in here; every creature has seen its share of fights and skirmishes. Every one of them hates her, she can see it in their regard, those that do not cringe away from McGee’s lurking presence. _If it comes down to it_ , she thinks to herself, _these creatures’ hate could be used in our favour._

As she follows their guide to the exit, there is a flicker above her, eyes trained to spot movement seeing it instantly. She slows, letting McGee see her eyes darting up to the maze of pipes above them. He stumbles, knocking a cage and setting the baboon inhabitant screeching in fury. The guide swears, moving over and checking the cage for damage, aiming a swift kick at McGee on the way. “Useless, mindless shit,” he snarls. “I can’t stand you robots.”

While he is occupied, Ziva raises her hand and looks up intently. _Come on, little one. Trust me._

The bird slips out the pipe, trying not to flutter as it dives onto Ziva’s shoulder and shuffles under her hair, tucking between the collar of her shirt and neck. Ziva can feel its tiny heart slamming against the back of her neck, claws biting into unprotected skin.

“Ready to move on, Miss Tali?” asks the man, kicking at McGee once more as he stands. McGee does not move, eyes locked on a point just over Ziva’s shoulder.

“Of course,” Ziva says, smiling calmly.

She excuses herself at the first chance, ducking into a bathroom with McGee close behind. The man will not think it strange that the golem follows her even here, attributing it to her own paranoia. It will only heighten his trust of her; paranoid partners in businesses such as these are a boon.

As soon as the door closes behind them, the parrot slips out of her clothes and jumps down to the sink, flickering its wings anxiously. “I know you’re a shifter,” it squawks, such a human voice odd from the throat of a bird. Genderless and robotically avian. “You’re not the first to sneak in here like this. You are the first to be followed by a free golem though.”

“How can you see through our spells?” McGee asks, moving forward and peering down at the bird. “And how did you escape? How are you here? Who are you?”

The bird blinks, pupils shifting size as it turns her head from side to side to examine him. “Lots of questions, no time to answer them. Don’t worry, there’s no one else here with the skill to see through them, they’re very well done. Except maybe the pixie, but they don’t generally let him near the VIPs. He’s weird. Gross. I’d like to sharpen my beak on him.”

“How did you get free?” Ziva questions again, aware that this may be a trap. If it is, they have already fallen into it.

The bird falls quiet, eyes darkening. “A friend. They’re gone now. They all go in the end.”

“We’re looking for someone in particular,” McGee presses. “A werewolf—big, silver-coated, blue eyes. Have you seen or heard anything…?”

“Leroy,” the bird replies instantly, tail flicking. They both fall quiet, McGee’s eyes flaring along with the thump of Ziva’s heart. “Of course. You must be Tony. He did say you’d be coming, adamant about it, in fact.”

Ziva stills, a spike of pain lancing through her. “Where is he?”

Silence answers. Long, painful silence. _Oh no,_ Ziva thinks.

“Gone,” the parrot finally says, emotion impossible to pick up in that croaky voice. “They all go in the end.”

 

* * *

 

“We should call for extraction,” McGee says later that night, sitting cross-legged on the floor near the door. “Gibbs isn’t here.”

“The parrot is mad,” Ziva points out. “It has been locked up in here for so long I do not think it even wants to escape.” She turns her head to look at the bird snoozing with its head under its wing. “We cannot trust it on this—he may have just been moved. We know where the office is… what do you think our chances are of reaching there without being caught?”

McGee stands slowly, eyes lightening. His answer does not surprise her.

“Tony would be disappointed if we didn’t try.”

 

* * *

 

She wonders if working with NCIS is making her soft. There had been a time when she would have padded silently through the halls like a ghost and made her way to her destination unseen. This time, she has McGee with her—he is hardly unobtrusive—, but, as they move together, every camera angles itself away from them and guards are drawn away by flickering lights and beeps of alarms in other directions. It is a different way to work, but no less effective.

“What do we do now?” she asks McGee when they reach the office and slip in easily. The parrot clings to her shoulder, a silent observer. He moves quickly over to the bank of computers, setting a hand on them with his sigils flaring to life from where they’ve been hidden. If anyone is to walk in now, their toast is cooked.

Well, it is not like they will be able to explain away their presence here, anyway.

“I can connect with my home network and upload the data to there, everything they have,” he tells her, eyes turning white-blue as he begins to delve into the software. “But it will take a little bit of time to get through.”

“We’ll keep watch then, shall we?” the parrot offers, clicking its beak. “I’m good at that, at least. Watching. It’s all I ever do.” Without another word, that is what it does, fluttering to the single screen that McGee is not using as a readout and studying the camera views shown upon it.

Ziva waits. And waits. And waits, with a cat’s endless patience. McGee will be done when he is done.

“Pixie,” the bird announces suddenly. Ziva turns her head, hissing as she sees someone moving towards them on the screen. Even with his head lowered, she recognises Chip.

“I’m not done,” McGee warns them in an offhand voice.

“Oh good,” the parrot says, opening its wings and flapping over to land on Ziva’s shoulder again. “I’ve always wanted to take a bite out of him. I bet he splinters beautifully.”

“You are not the only one,” Ziva replies darkly, opening the door and slipping out. “McGee, send the extraction request as soon as you are done. We will distract Charles.”

McGee hums in agreement, and she hears the electronic lock click shut on the door as it closes.

 

* * *

 

She had intended upon leading the pixie away by letting him sight her and give chase. Instead, as soon as they near the corner where he would be turning, the parrot dives off her shoulder and flings itself screeching at his face, sharp tipped claws slashing at unprotected eyes. The only soft part of the wooden pixie. Chip screams, lashing out with his own magic in shock, trying to strike the fast-moving bird with spikes of swiftly-growing wood.

Ziva swears and shifts, snarling in pain as the spells on her arm break excruciatingly and leave sore welts on her skin. She hits him from behind, sinking sharp fangs into soft wood and biting down, splinters and sap filling her mouth. He is like no opponent she has ever faced before, turning impossibly in her grasp and sinking long, hard fingers into the fur around her neck, trying to shake her loose. Her teeth and claws slip and grate unpleasantly on his bark surface, failing to do any damage at all. The parrot continues to shriek abuse at him, but he wraps himself around Ziva and tightens his hands, cutting off her airway and causing her to slacken her jaws in a desperate attempt to get oxygen, kicking at him with powerful hind legs.

Black spots begin to appear in front of her eyes as her consciousness fades.

_“Run,”_ she calls to the bird, unsure of where it is now the shrieks have fallen quiet. _“Get yourself out of here.”_

Chip is suddenly swept off of her by a powerful blow, his frame slamming into the wall with a cracking sound like timber splintering. She does not have time to check to see if he is still alive as she staggers up, wheezing air through a bruised and swollen airway. McGee appears overhead and picks her up with one hand as though she weighs nothing at all, sprinting down the hall with the parrot swooping close behind.

_“I got help,”_ it sends, voice softer and most definitely female without the crack of the parrot’s vocal cords harshening it, before switching to her audible voice for McGee. “There’s a freezer up ahead, two rights through the kitchen. They keep meat in there for the captives—it has an automatic door you can charm shut until help arrives.”

McGee turns, heading quickly in that direction as alarms begin to wail. “I sent the request,” he huffs over his shoulder. “They’re on their way.”

Ziva rumbles in reply, sending, _“For once in his life, I hope that Tony is not late,”_ and hearing the parrot laugh.


	17. Us and the Wolves

He’s floating in a void, and someone is apologising to him. “I’m sorry,” the voice says softly, close to his ears, and the hand that runs over his head is gentle. “I shouldn’t have let them put you out there. Not long now.” He remembers nothing but flames and the sound of screaming, thinking to himself that, if this is dying, it’s not really so bad.

When he sits up again, he’s in the woods near his home and a copper-coated wolf is looking down playfully at him with her mouth open and tongue lolling. He knows her. He could never not know her.

He’s always loved redheads, two of them in particular.

_“Hurry up, Leroy,”_ Shannon teases him, bowing onto her front legs and holding her tail high. _“You take so long!”_

He leaps up and crashes into her, running his muzzle along the side of her face in a loving gesture, heart fit to burst. He’s missed this. He doesn’t know why, but he’s missed this.

_“Come on, Dad!”_ whines a young voice by his knee, Kelly darting past on long, awkward legs, her coat so much like her mother’s it hurts. _“We’re going to miss it.”_

He chases them but, no matter how fast he runs, he can’t quite keep up.

 

* * *

 

Fornell moves quickly through the complex, hearing his wolves working around him taking out anyone who moves.

_“Left quadrant clear,”_ Agent Harley sends, followed shortly by the right squad repeating the announcement.

_“Clear on point,”_ Agent Harper sends. _“We’re heading down now, have medics on standby for captives retrieved.”_ Fornell sends his appreciation back. It’s good to have a pack he can trust implicitly to get the job done.

“Signal is coming from the kitchen, judging by this blueprint.” The mage who’s leading them to their two NCIS agents’ turns on his heel and strides towards the double doors leading to the food prep area. Fornell follows, hearing the soft pad of the wolf behind him pick up. A quick glance over his shoulder shows ice-blue eyes and a light tan coat, greying at the muzzle. He rethinks his prior thought: he can’t trust _all_ of them. Mike Franks—the wolf that had brought Gibbs back from the dead the first time, after Shannon and Kelly, and the one wolf Fornell knows will bring Gibbs home absolutely. Ex-NCIS, ex-Quantico pack, and still a pain in Fornell’s tail. But, a damn good agent and an event better wolf, even if he breaks every rule in the book. Gibbs learned it somewhere, after all.

They stop in front of a large, automatic door, the mage looking puzzled. “In there, apparently, but it’s locked.”

Fornell huffs and tilts his head back to howl, waiting a beat before the door grinds open and McGee steps out, followed by a shivering cheetah with a ruffled looking parrot clinging inexplicably to the scruff of her neck.

“You received the data?” McGee asks as soon as he’s out.

_“We did, and something better,”_ Fornell replies, aiming the answer at the unhappy looking cat at McGee’s heels.

_“What?”_ David responds, her voice faint. He’s not used to listening to cats.

The wolf behind Fornell bares his fangs in a mock human smile, barking out a harsh laugh. _“We got Gibbs,”_ Franks says with a triumphant snarl. _“Now get your shit together, kiddos. His holiday is officially over.”_

No, Fornell doesn’t trust NCIS’s old hound… not with listening to his command. But, saving Gibbs, bringing him home?

Ain’t no better man to do that job than the wolf who’s done it before.

_“Lock this place down,”_ Fornell calls as they bound to the exit, moving on to the twin facility where their friend has been shifted. _“No one in or out. We have healers en-route for the injured. We finish this today.”_

 

* * *

 

One moment Gibbs is bounding through the woods on the heels of his family, the next he’s on a cold, wet street and there’s a sandy-coated wolf eyeing him with icy eyes, large black collar with NIS emblazoned on the side standing out vividly against light fur.

_“Get it together, Probie,”_ Franks sends grumpily, shaking water out of his coat. _“Stupid shit like that will get you dead.”_

_“Sorry,”_ Gibbs sends back, revelling in the cool rain on his back, weighing his coat down. He’d forgotten what rain felt like.

A wry snort. _“Never say you’re sorry. It’s a sign of weakness.”_

 

* * *

 

Franks is next to him, and Fornell has never liked the man, but he’s glad to have the cunning wolf there. Around them, the atmosphere is tense, everyone on edge about what they’re going to find when they move in.

DiNozzo doesn’t say a word when he arrives with Agent Lee at his side, faced locked into a terrifying rictus of a grin. The SWAT and FBI take one look at him and step aside, no questions asked. Guess it is somewhat useful, having a pissed off vampire on their side. Maybe Gibbs knew what he was doing with that one, when he’d vanished off to a case in Baltimore and returned with a pet vampire toddling after him.

_“When do we get this show on the road?”_ Franks complains, scratching at his stomach with his hind leg and scattering fur onto the ground. _“Never did hold much with standing around waiting for things to bite me on the ass.”_

_“Now,”_ Fornell replies, locking eyes with the leader of the SWAT team, who nods and holds his hand up in a silent command.

“Use of deadly force authorised,” he calls to his team, a ripple of tension following his words.

Fornell relays that information to the wolves with him, watching the way DiNozzo’s eyes glitter in barely suppressed delight at the news. McGee eyes him worriedly, his glamour back and vest on, displaying the NCIS acronym in bright lettering. David stands at his side in human form, her own vest in place, eyes narrowed and throat marked darkly with livid bruising. She looks just as dangerously on edge as the vampire. Fornell knows that look. This is going to be a bloodbath.

And, despite that, he still takes them in there.

 

* * *

 

The world shifts around him again as he follows Franks down the street at a lope, and suddenly he’s bounding through the woods again at the side of a younger, unscarred Fornell, fur darker and fuller, but eyes still the same.

_“Keep running like that and the only deer we’ll be catching are the already dead ones,”_ Fornell complains, rolling his eyes. _“You always been this slow and I just never noticed?”_

_“I was quick enough to get away from Diane,”_ Gibbs replies shortly, letting his shoulder bump against his friend’s.

_“I said I was sorry about that, alright. You didn’t even come to our wedding.”_

_“I warned you not to marry her.”_ Gibbs breathes in through his mouth, tasting the air and the slight scent of deer on the wind.

_“She’s not that bad. And you married her first.”_

_“Yeah—I also divorced her. That should have been your first clue.”_

They laugh, and the forest fades.

 

* * *

 

There’s a moment where it could have all gone wrong, when they turn a corner and the men facing them are heavily armed and completely ready to use them. Before they get a chance, there’s a blur of movement near Fornell and the bullet that should have slammed into his skull instead impacts with a dull thud into DiNozzo’s vest as the vampire hurtles over him and lunges at the humans. Fornell doesn’t wait to see what happens next, hearing a startled shriek and cut-off growl, but Franks waits a second before catching up with him with David at his side.

_“We didn’t have one of those back in our day,”_ Franks says, voice impressed.

Fornell rolls his eyes, deliberately not looking back at what the vampire is doing. _“Different times. We don’t discriminate anymore.”_

_“Oh, I wasn’t complaining. That was the cleanest take-down I’ve seen since Gibbs.”_

_“Well, he learned from the best.”_

 

* * *

 

He’s in Baltimore now and looking up at a vampire watching him with an arrogant expression, police badge displayed brazenly around his neck.

“You want me to work for you?” Tony says with a sneer that’s as fake as the watch on his wrist. “I don’t make a habit of taking orders from old sea-dogs.”

_“You don’t waste good, DiNozzo,”_ he sends quietly. _“And you’re good.”_

The swaggering expression falls from DiNozzo’s face and he tilts his head as though listening to something far away, before looking back at Gibbs with his familiar—familiar, not arrogant, and Gibbs wants to howl with relief at seeing it—grin. “Told you I was coming, Boss. And I sound _pissed_.”

 

* * *

 

Fornell turns a corner and becomes aware of Gibbs’ presence at the same time Franks does.

_“Got him,”_ roars Franks, lunging ahead.  Fornell follows, hearing David fire over their heads and take out a man who’d been aiming at Franks’ flank.

They don’t even slow down.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs opens his eyes and the healer is standing over him with his hands in the air. There’s a massive tan wolf staring the man down with its teeth bared and hackles raised. _“Give me one good reason not to tear out your miserable throat,”_ snarls a voice from the past.

Gibbs whines and tilts his head up, locking eyes with a familiar gaze. Fornell stares down at him like he’s a stranger, tail low and ears flat. _“Is the hunt over, Tobias?”_ Gibbs sends weakly, flicking his own tail in a half-hearted greeting.

Fornell dips his head and runs his tongue along Gibbs’ muzzle in an uncharacteristic show of affection, voice shaken as he answers.

_“Yes.”_  



	18. Us and the Fallout

The walk towards the director standing alone in the polished hallway of the hospital feels as though it takes Abby years to complete. At the same time, it ends far too quickly. “Is it really him?” she asks Jenny, not sure what she’s hoping the answer to be. “Did they really find him?” It’s unreal. Almost impossible feeling. Gibbs, their Gibbs, _home_. Sort of. Maybe a bit hurt? Maybe not… maybe he’s fine?

Jenny turns to her with eyes that gleam oddly in the bright lights, a calm in them. “It’s him, Abby. They’re still sorting out which captives to send to which hospitals, but Portsmouth was the only one with a trauma one centre, and he was high priority.”

Abby takes a deep breath. It’s _him._ She doesn’t know how she feels about that just yet, not yet. “He’s going to be okay though, right?”

“They say he should be fine.” The word ‘physically’ goes unsaid, but it hangs in the air between them like smoke.

Abby wonders what he’s seen, and then promptly forces herself to stop wondering. It bursts out of her still, the panic and the horror and the past few months all tangling up into yelling at her boss: “I don’t want to hear should be! I want to hear _will_ be! Should be is not positive!” Abby chokes back a harsh sob that tears at her throat as she swallows it down, the result of months of pent up waiting wanting to be released at once.

Can’t anything be positive anymore?

Jenny reaches out and pulls her into a hug. Abby sniffles into the director’s expensive coat, nose inches from the raised silver ridges of the iron scars. What kind of scars would her Gibbs bear now?

“Enough, Abs,” Jenny murmurs, rubbing the small of Abby’s back.

“I just want him back,” Abby whimpers, closing her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Ducky finds Abigail sitting alone in the hall, hair down and lank around her shoulders, eyes red-ringed with frustrated tears. “My dear, you look positively awful,” he says, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Have we had no word of Jethro’s condition yet?”

Abigail quivers under his hand. “He’s out of surgery. They say we can visit him, two at a time.”

Ducky raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Then why are you not in there?” She looks at up him, and the fear on her face is heartbreaking to behold. She too suffers from the fear of the unknown. It's not surprising. After seeing the grim visages of the men and women clearing the scene of the enslaves’ captivity, Ducky isn’t entirely sure he wants to see what lies on the other side either.

“Come, Abigail,” he says finally, easing her up and twining his arm through hers. “We shall go together. We are long overdue a visit with him.”

 

* * *

 

Tony knows exactly how long down it’s been since he’d first received the call saying Gibbs had been taken. He could, if asked, recite everything he had been doing that moment, in perfect, painful detail. In the last three months, he’s found he can do a lot of things he hadn’t known he was capable of. He’s found that he can be a team leader and hold their motley gang together, with relative success. Well, Ziva hates him and he’s pretty sure Abby is one bad day away from turning them all into capsicums, but they’re alive and there ready to welcome their boss home. Ignoring the whole necromancy bit, anyway. He’s also found he can hide his pain well enough that none of them ask him how he’s doing, assuming that he’s coping as well as he always has.

He’s found that he can survive alone.

What he can’t do is walk into that hospital and smile charmingly at the nurse while asking her for directions to ‘Special Agent Gibbs’ room.’ He then can’t walk into that room and see what’s left of his boss after they’d plucked him out of Hell itself. He can’t walk in there and grin at him and tell him how much they’ve missed him and how goddamn needed he is and always will be.

So, instead, he stays in Hell and helps the grim-faced FBI clear the scene. Directing the injured to medics, the dead—and there were so many dead, or dying, and he’ll never get the smell of rot out of his nose—to morgues, and the guilty to the mages who would gleefully begin the process of temporarily stripping their powers away from them until such a time as sentencing makes it permanent. His throat and mouth are thick with the remainder of the blood he’s spilt this day, and he can’t help but wish he could spill more. For every dead innocent he helps carry from these halls, he wants to exact revenge.

For the first time in years, he’s the kind of hungry that won’t let him ignore it.

 

* * *

 

Tim helps the magical tactics team with the dangerous task of subduing and relocating the various rare and dangerous beasts they’ve found in the facility where Gibbs has been a prisoner. He’s never been quite as thankful for his kiln-hardened skin as he is when the subjugation spells fail as they’re moving a half-grown basilisk, and the snake slashes razor sharp fangs coated with venom over his arm.

“Better you than me,” the mage helping him grunts, increasing the potency of the spell and wrestling the heavy muzzle back onto the beast. “They’ve sent these poor bastards mad.”

Tim wipes the venom off his arm with a rag that smoulders, eyeing the weeping sores that litter the dull scales on the long serpentine body. “Can you blame them?” he says softly. “I think going mad would be the only way to survive this place.” It’s a dark thought. _Can Tony survive us saving Gibbs, only to find him mad?_ he wonders.

“What will happen to them all?” another mage asks, a small woman with a perpetually worried expression. “Half of them we can’t even export legally to their homes and, even if we did, they can never be released. They’re too full of hate. Will they be caged the rest of their lives too?”

Tim doesn’t meet her gaze. For most of these creatures, there’s no happy ending in store.

 

* * *

 

For a moment, Abby is sure that they’ve got the wrong room. In fact, she’d be absolutely positive that it’s the wrong room, except Director Shepard is standing by the low bed where the great wolf lays sprawled, her expression murderous. So, since really, it’s unlikely that Jenny is just visiting a random werewolf with silver fur and a sign over his head reading ‘Gibbs, Leroy’, Abby is forced to face the truth.

He’s not okay.

“Oh, Jethro,” breathes Ducky with the voice of someone who’s seen a great many horrors in their lifetime and hadn’t ever expected to see more. “We should have found you sooner. I’m so sorry.”

“Is he in pain?” Abby asks Jenny, unable to find more words than that.

Jenny shakes her head. “They don’t think so.”

Abby kneels by the bed and reaches down with a gentle hand, running her hand over the familiar muzzle, now scarred and torn, and carefully avoiding the ventilator attached. IVs run out of his legs, shaved patches of fur giving him a ragged appearance. His flank is a mass of burns, red and weeping, but positively attractive compared to the sunken ulcer where the manticore’s sting has melted flesh away like butter held over an open flame.

“You’re probably going to have to take some time off work, Gibbs,” she says finally, resting her hand on his chest and counting his steady heartbeats under her palm. “It’s okay, we’ve got your back. You’ll see. We _never_ stopped looking.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Tim leaves the scene, he’s exhausted, filthy, and heartsore. Somehow, he knows that it’s going to take more than a shower to clear his mind and body of what he’s witnessed today. But, before he can rest, there’s somewhere he has to go.

“Are you coming?” he asks Ziva on his way out, finding her kneeling over the row of sheet covered bodies, her face taunt. “I’m going to the hospital.”

Ziva looks up at him with cat’s eyes and shakes her head. “I have a duty here,” she replies shortly. “There are… there are children in these rows, McGee.”

“Children that you can’t help anymore.” Tim doesn’t know how to reach her in the dark place her mind is taking her, seeing afresh the guilt and misery she’d carried on her shoulders when Gibbs had first been taken.

Her eyes close for a moment. “One of these children may be Zach Tanner,” she says finally, and something cold and hard drops into Tim’s stomach. “I owe it to Gibbs to at least know his fate, when he awakens to ask. And he _will_ ask, of this I am sure.”

Tim nods and leaves wordlessly, unsure of how to voice his hope that Gibbs _will_ wake up. The damage he’s taken… but no. Tim won’t even entertain that thought.

Gibbs has to wake up. They’ve come too far to lose him now.

 

* * *

 

The two examiners sent to assist him are beginning to wilt by the time the third delivery of bodies arrives. Jimmy talks to the coroners as he signs for the bodies, watching them wheel the five new corpses through with beaten postures. “Busy bloody day,” one of them says with a shaky yawn. “We gotta go back for another lot after this, heading over to Bethesda. Every autopsy and morgue in DC is swamped.”

“Emergency rooms too,” the other adds. “All manner of injures you wouldn’t believe and half of them are out of their heads. Three nurses and a doc have been hurt already, half the cops in the city are standing by to step in if needed.”

“Nightmare,” the first cuts in, shaking his head knowingly. “You hear about this stuff, overseas and far away, but to think of it happening right under our feet? It boggles the mind.”

Jimmy chokes on his words as the last body is unloaded, the bag sagging around a terribly small body. “Are these victims or…?” he asks when he remembers how to talk.

The man checks his clipboard as he tears the sheet loose to hand over the copy. “Two who were involved, both taken out by your vampire, and three victims. Oh, hell, one’s listed as a kid. What a waste.”

“What a waste,” the other repeats, closing the door to the van and leaving Jimmy standing alone with the dead.

 

* * *

 

By the time Fornell leaves the scene, the night is beginning to dim into dawn and everyone around him looks as beaten as he feels. He can just imagine the headlines now. Even the reporters hovering around by the barrier look drawn. There’s not one person here who will ever be able to forget this night.

He finds David standing by the few captives who had been physically well enough to refuse medical attention and determined to stay and see it through. Four. Four people out of one hundred and seventy-three, in this faculty alone. More over the city, as other cells are cleared out.

“You should have gone home hours ago,” he scolds her, eyes scanning the haggard expressions of the freed captives. With a jolt, he recognises one of them.

“I could not,” David replies shortly. “Tony has not left yet.”

“My son,” the man next to her whispers. “My son, he was captured too, months ago. Tanner. Zach Tanner. We… Agent David was helping me look for him.”

Fornell doesn’t need to ask if they were successful; the answer is already clear in their postures.

A woman stands, and she brings with her the scent of feathers and misery, the stink of captivity still thick on her skin. “Hollis Mann,” she introduces herself, holding out a shaking hand. She sways slightly on her feet, clearly unused to human form. “Those bastards had me seven years. I never thought this day would come.”

_Seven years, we missed this._ Fornell shivers. “I don’t think anyone foresaw this day.”

She nods briskly, and there’s a shade of the woman she once was in her bearing. “On behalf of everyone you’ve saved today… thank you. Thank you, with all of our hearts. Leroy always said people would be coming for him, and I’m ashamed to say I never believed him. I was wrong.”

 

* * *

 

Tony goes home.

His home, quiet and dusty and heavy with the atmosphere that homes get when they’ve been left alone too long. He knows how that feels. And how’s that, when he’s relating more to an apartment than he is to the man lying alone in a hospital room.

But, shit, Tony’s never pretended to be a good person, and his teeth are still red.

He’s on his fourth beer when his phone rings and Ziva’s voice crackles through, broken in a way he’d never thought possible for the tough-as-nails Mossad operative. “Are you coming to the hospital?” she asks. “I am here with Fornell now.”

“Something’s come up,” Tony says, using his fangs to lever another bottle open. “I can’t make it.”

There’s a beat of disapproving silence before she speaks again. “Tony, he is awake.”


	19. Us and the Recovery

Ducky walks into Jethro’s room the next morning and finds himself facing a lowered head and cold gaze, fangs bared. He stops, immediately aware of the precarious position he has wandered into, and coughs softly. “Welcome back, Jethro. You’ve been greatly missed.”

There’s a long moment where the silence stretches between them as a physical distance, before a spark of recognition alights in the wolf’s blue eyes. A long, drawn out whine sounds out, and the great beast slowly lowers himself onto the bed, turning his head to look down at the medical equipment covering his body.   

“You are in terrible shape,” Ducky tells him gently, walking forward and lowering himself into the seat beside the bed. It has the unfortunate side-effect of leaving him leaning forward to peer down on the supine wolf, a show of dominance that is sorely _not_ needed right now. “I’m pleased to say that many of the men and women responsible for this are currently residing in my morgue. Unfortunately, many of their victims are as well. Do you know, we’ve actually filled the morgue for the first time since that dreadful business years ago—”

Gibbs settles back, heaving a sigh and watching him warily, as though unsure that he is truly there at all. Ducky glances at the time, knowing that Abby will soon be along. She will be pleased to see Jethro awake, and aware.

_Not human, though,_ Ducky thinks to himself. There’s very little that’s human in the eyes watching him. Only time will tell whether they will ever be human again.

 

* * *

 

Fornell is surprised to find that he’s the second in to visit Gibbs, his team notably absent. Doctor Mallard looks almost relieved to see him, excusing himself and leaving them alone. Fornell shifts as soon as the doctor closes the door behind him, facing his friend and ex-pack brother for the first time in months.

_“You look like hell,”_ he sends, and he can’t keep the complex layers of emotions out of his tone. Worry, fear, disgust, shock.

Gibbs blinks, tries to stretch, and flinches as various wounds pull and tear. _“I feel like hell,”_ he replies. His voice is the most welcome sound Tobias has heard all day or, rather, for months. It’s a hell of a lot better than DiNozzo’s. _“What’s your excuse?”_

_“Clearing up loose ends. Why the wolf coat still? I’d have thought you’d be itching for two legs after three months on four.”_

Gibbs is silent, looking away from him. The movement reveals the ragged scarring around his neck, a thick ropey line of silver where the iron had spent months biting cruelly into tender skin.  The other wounds will heal. Fornell knows from experience that that one never will. He also knows that Gibbs will bear it proudly, a sign of what he’s suffered and triumphed over. That’s just how Gibbs is—there’s no way these bastards have changed him that much.

_“Has it only been three months?”_ he says finally. _“It felt… longer.”_

_“You’re telling me. I spent those three months helping DiNutso chase his own tail. That boy is lost without you.”_

Gibbs grunts and turns away, withdrawing from him. Fornell stays until the hour breaks, and then he reluctantly says his farewells and shifts back to human.

Gibbs doesn’t say another word.

 

* * *

 

_“You got old, marine,”_ Franks says as soon as he lopes in the door, fur as ragged and thin as Gibbs remembers, darkened by his time in the sun. _“Who gave you leave to be lying about in bed?”_

_“You looked in a mirror lately?”_ Gibbs responds, a snap of his old self in his voice. Franks can see something distant in his eyes, something that’s crept in over the past few months and that will take a hell of a lot longer to creep back out. _“You’re no yearling yourself.”_

Franks snuffs the air of the hospital room, scenting the still faint lingering touch of the cages on Gibbs fur, overlaid with antiseptics and healing spells. On top of all of it, light perfume. _“You got a girl admirer?”_ he teases, tasting camphor. _“A little witch, ey? Bet she’s a redhead.”_

_“Abby,”_ Gibbs replies remotely, licking at the front leg holding the IV. _“She was here. Left quickly.”_

_“Those things are made for human arms. You’d be more comfortable in a pink skin, Probie. You know that. Or you got some reason for keeping your fur on? Perhaps encouraging those quick visits from your team?”_

Gibbs watches him with the observant look that Franks had taught him, all those years ago when he was still an eager eyed pup torn by grief. Not so eager now. Not so young. But, then again, neither is Franks. _“Says you. You smell like you spend more time a wolf than a man these days.”_

_“Maybe I got reason to. I’m retired.”_

_“You quit.”_

Hah. Franks has got him now. He leers. _“You didn’t.”_

 

* * *

 

Abby warns him what to expect when he walks into that hospital room, but Tim still isn’t prepared for the detachment in Gibbs’ eyes. “Lo’, Boss,” he says awkwardly, unsure of what to say now the man that has haunted their thoughts for a quarter of a year is finally back.

Kinda back.

“We missed you,” he says, seeing a flick of interest in the tilt of the wolf’s ears. “Well, we all did, but especially Abby. She’s got a Gibbs wall up, one whole wall covered in pictures of you. It’s pretty crazy, I didn’t even know there was that many photos of you in existence. And Tony, oh man, Tony…” he pauses, and this time he knows that Gibbs is listening. “Tony needs you, Boss. He’s lost without you. We all are.”

 

* * *

 

“Don’t look at me like that Gibbs, you have no idea. Do you know what Tony is like as a boss? He’s worse than you! I mean, at least you’re consistent. One day he’s a drill sergeant from hell and I just want to smack him back into place, but then the next he’s running physical trust exercises at motivational seminars, and I just can’t do it, you know?” Abby takes a gasping breath, trying to cram everything from the past few months into the short amount of time she has with him. There’s still a whole lotta bodies needing identities back at NCIS; they’re taking it in turns to visit their boss between endless forensics and autopsies. It means time is short, which is kinda ironic, really, seeing as their time before this was _none_ and it was finding him that’s given them this little bit, but also taken it away. “I don’t want to sound like I’m ungrateful, because he did a really good job and I mean a _really_ good job holding the team together while you were gone but he had big boots to fill and I think he has blisters, Gibbs. I mean, he just wants you back. We all want you back, we’ve done everything to get you back and well… you are back, right?”

Gibbs peers at her over his muzzle and sighs.

It’s not really an answer, but she takes it as one anyway and beams at him over the scarf she’s knitting him to cover his scars, if he wants to.

 

* * *

 

Jimmy visits Gibbs with one job, and it’s not one he’s going to entrust to anyone else. Well, he could have given it to Ducky, but he’s the one who supervised the autopsy so, in the end, it’s his duty.

“Agent Gibbs?” he says, standing ramrod straight when the level attention of the wolf lands on him. He’s never actually stood in front of Gibbs as a wolf before and, even with Gibbs lying down, Jimmy still has to crane his neck up to make eye contact. “I just want you to know… Zach Tanner’s body was located at one of the raided facilities. He didn’t make it, sir. I’m sorry.”

The wolf nods and, as Jimmy turns to leave, touches his nose gently against his arm in farewell.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs had expected that the revolving door of visitors would trickle to an end as the days wore on and he still adamantly refused to shift into a more encouraging form. He knows what the doctors murmur behind closed doors as his wounds heals and he still doesn’t shift. _“Going rogue. He’s not coming back. Been a wolf too long.”_

It happens, wolves losing their humanity. Not often, not these days, but it happens. Gibbs had always assumed it was the route Franks would take, losing his human skin for good and taking to the wilds. The idea suits him. Not Gibbs though, he’s never wanted it… until now. It’s never been as appealing as it is now. After wanting nothing more than his team and his home for months, Gibbs isn’t entirely sure he knows what to do with it now it’s here.

He wouldn’t have heard him come in at all if the faint smell of old blood hadn’t betrayed his arrival. Gibbs lifts his head and finds himself face to face with the real Tony DiNozzo, looking down on him with ancient eyes.

He knows it’s the real DiNozzo, because the Tony of his hallucinations had never been in this much pain.

“Eight-four captives dead,” Tony monotones. “Not including the non-sentients. Zach Tanner among the deceased. His father is alive. Strictly speaking, anyway. The Hicks children are still missing. Thirty-four people in the cells awaiting trials, they’re all likely to fry. Another twenty-one dead during the raids.” He stops and licks his lips, and Gibbs flinches as he recognises the look of a vampire who’s fed recently, a predatory hunger to his eyes. “Twelve of them _mine_.”

Tony has killed for him. Tony, who’d taken to his weapons training with gusto so he would never have to use his fangs to defend himself. Tony, who drunk blood from a baggie and only if he had to. He’d done that for Gibbs. In that single moment, Gibbs’ resolve wavers and he considers shifting and taking Tony’s hand in his, telling him what he so obviously needs to hear.

But, he’s weak.

_“You did good, Tony—you did me proud,”_ he sends instead, and the words go unheard.

Tony shrugs. “But you know, in the end, we can’t help what we are. Blood always shows. Glad you’re back, Boss.” He turns and leaves, and Gibbs can’t shake the feeling that he’s losing something that he should be fighting to hold onto.

 

* * *

 

Ziva hunches into her cat form outside Gibbs’ door, sharp ears listening to Tony’s report. His pain and betrayal at Gibbs’ refusal to reconnect with them is clear to all, him having taken it much more personally than the rest of them. Ziva knows what it is like to need to hide away from your past. Tony has always faced his and laughed at it. To see his mentor, his role model, cringing away from facing it is a blow. Tony has much more to lose than she does if Gibbs cannot come back from this.

Faint words float to her mind’s ears as Tony opens the door and stalks out without a glance in her direction.

_“You did good, Tony—you did me proud.”_

Hearing his voice almost brings her down, relief crashing through her. She knows that Fornell has been in to see him, has been reassured that Gibbs _is_ still in there, but being told is one thing. Knowing is entirely another. As she slips into the room, he does not seem to notice her presence. _“Perhaps you would be better served telling him that in person,”_ she suggests, seeing him startle in surprise before scowling.

_“He knows it.”_

_“He is thick-headed. He needs to be reminded. And he has suffered greatly—you extend that suffering by pushing him away.”_ It is in this moment that she realises that she is mad at Gibbs for this—for adding to Tony’s pain. It is in this moment that she realises which of the two men she is more protective of.

It is a surprise.

There is a snarl, and the wolf is on her, his IV tearing out. She does not show fear, staring him down coldly. _“He’s suffered?”_ Gibbs sends in a fury, hackles raised. _“He doesn’t know suffering! Do you know what it’s like to face a friend and know you’re about to take their life to save your own?”_

She only needs one word to answer this. _“Ari.”_

 

* * *

 

Tony walks into his house that night after pacing the streets on a quest to ignoring the thirst that claws at his throat, and finds Gibbs sitting on his couch, staring down at something in his hands.

“Dusty in here,” the man states, voice husky with disuse. “You’ve not been home much. Not been looking after yourself. There’s no blood in the fridge. Starving yourself?”

“Hasn’t been blood in that fridge since Kate. Should you even be out of hospital?” Tony’s heart is thudding in his chest, not ready for this confrontation.

Gibbs reaches to the coffee table and puts the wolf carving down, the wood worn smooth and shiny from months of Tony handling it nightly. He runs a finger over the book sitting there the old volume of nursery rhymes that Tony had found in Gibbs’ desk drawer.

“I think,” Gibbs begins carefully, without meeting Tony’s eyes, “that I’m right where I need to be, DiNozzo.”


	20. Tim and the Downfall

A month is too soon.

“Are you sure you should be back, Boss?” Tim asks with surprise when he walks in and finds Gibbs looking down at his desk in disgust. The eerily familiar sight has Tim almost wanting to check the date, to see if the past four months have just been some sort of hellish fever dream they’d all shared.

“No good sitting around on my ass,” Gibbs grumbles, dragging the drawer out and dumping the contents on his desk. “Your mother ever teach you to keep a clean workspace, DiNozzo?”

There’s a soft scuff of shoe behind him, and Tim turns his head to find Tony inches behind him, having ghosted in silently, face expressionless. “My mother is dead,” he says flatly, and Gibbs flinches. Tim blinks. Gibbs should have known that. He _does_ know that—they all do. So, why did he say it?

“Gibbs!” shrieks a piercing voice, breaking the sudden awkward silence. “Gibbs is back, Gibbs is back, Gibbs is back!” Tim watches but, even as Gibbs carefully hugs Abby, holding her away from the still healing wound in his side, the man’s blue eyes never leave Tony.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Tim makes a mistake. It’s a simple mistake, a stupid miscalculation, and four months ago it would have earned him a harsh word and a level stare of retribution. Hell, two weeks ago it would have earned him a DiNozzo-style head-slap and probably caused his PDA to be confiscated. But, now, Gibbs doesn’t even seem to notice the error, even when Tim points it out and comments on how lucky it was that it was noted before it had cost them the investigation.

Tony eyes him from his spot back at his old desk but, when Gibbs says nothing, he just lowers his head and silently goes back to his paperwork. Tim sighs and confiscates his PDA from himself, locking it into his lower drawer until he feels he’s been punished enough.

 

* * *

 

“They’re calling them the Dead Men,” Abby says one day when Tim walks into her lab, watching the muted TV with a distant expression. “Did you know that?”

Tim is confused. “The slavers?”  

“No. The ones they saved. They’re saying that no one who went into those pits came out right. That they’re all just… just walking Dead Men.”

Tim thinks of the emptiness in Gibbs’ eyes, and thinks maybe they aren’t completely wrong.

 

* * *

 

“You run the plates, McGee?”

Tim looks up from where he’s carefully making a mould of the tire prints, running back over everything Gibbs has said to him since they’ve arrived at the crime scene. “You didn’t ask me to, Boss. I didn’t even know we had plates.”

Gibbs narrows his eyes at him, still pose and cold gaze eerily wolf like. “Got them from a witness. You need to listen, McGee, I told you twice. Get them from Ziva.” He stalks away, still looking mildly pissed.

“Did he ask me?” Tim asks Ziva as she wanders over, mouth in a thoughtful line. “I swear, I would _remember_ if he’d asked me.”

“Perhaps not out loud,” she states quietly.

 

* * *

 

The suspect runs. Tim is fast on his feet, but he’s not going to kid himself. He’s well aware that, when it comes down to it, he’s never going to win a race against anyone else from Team Gibbs. Probably not even Abby. One moment Gibbs is next to him, then the suspect bounds away on two cloven hooves, and there’s a wolf launching itself into a sprint from a standing stop.

“Boss!” yells Tim as the two vanish in a blur of fur and speed, hollow warnings about going off on their own ringing in his head. “Wait!”

But they’re gone, and there’s zero chance of Tim catching them.

Fuck.

“Where’s Gibbs?” Tony shouts, appearing seconds later as though summoned by Tim’s discomfort.

“Went after him alone,” Tim tells him, frustration leeching into his tone. There’s no point him even attempting to chase the two, he can’t match the wolf, let alone the satyr. Tony bounds off, face _pissed,_ and Ziva sidles up next to him. “Why did he go after him alone? He’s always telling us not to go off on our own.”

Ziva shrugs. “He is remembering how to work in a team. It is what I would have done, when I first started with NCIS.”

“Would have, being the key terms there.”

She eyes him sadly, and he wonders why she’s suddenly the one with all the answers. Why isn’t Tony the guy helping them through this? “Give him time.”

 

* * *

 

“Are you Special Agent Gibbs?” The woman ducks under the crime scene tape, ignoring Tim’s startled attempt to throw an arm out and stop her. “The NCIS werewolf that was taken by the Gelloudes Slavers? Would you mind answering a few questions?” Gibbs shoots her a cold stare, ignoring her and continuing walking.

“You need to leave,” Tim warns her, seeing Tony turn his head and eye her with a guarded expression.

“How does it feel to be one of the few surviving Dead Men?” she shouts, shouldering past him. “When so many died, how does it feel to have been saved? Do you feel like you deserve it more than those that didn’t make it?” Ziva’s eyes widen, and she shoots an apprehensive look at the dangerously still Tony as Tim freezes. Gibbs turns and looks back at the woman, face blank. She doesn’t hesitate, seeing his pause—incorrectly—as indecision. “Is it true that a mole at NCIS led to your capture by the slavers? How does it feel to work for the agency that led to you losing three months of your life? Do you feel like they’ve done enough to recompense you?”

She’s so focused on Gibbs’ reaction that she doesn’t see Tony until he’s on her, dragging her up by her collar and tossing her bodily over the tape, squeaking in shock as her ass hits the pavement. “Come into my crime scene again and I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice,” Tony says with a predatory calm, eyes glittering. He smiles brightly, a smile that, if McGee were human, would be his cue to start running. “Come near my team again, and I’ll have more than your job.” Sharp fangs flash warningly as he speaks, and the woman is up and gone before he’s even turned around.

Gibbs studies him, Tony avoiding eye contact with them all and fiddling with his camera as though nothing had happened. “Get to work, we’re losing daylight,” Gibbs says finally, walking away.

 

* * *

 

“Director Shepard wants to speak to you.” Ziva hands him the post-it with Cynthia’s message on it, and he groans inwardly. This can’t be good.

“Director,” he greets her politely as he walks into her room.

“I’m not going to beat about the bush, Agent McGee,” she says, standing and folding her arms behind her back. “Is Gibbs ready to be back?”

“He’s only been back a week, ma’am. Surely there are better people to ask than me.”

Her mouth thins into a line. “Oh? Should I ask Agent DiNozzo and expect him not to protect his boss? Or Officer David, who is unlikely to say anything unless she feels the information is somehow pertinent to hers or Gibbs’ interests instead of the agency as a whole?”

“Director…”

She’s not done. “Perhaps I should ask Miss Sciuto and, if I don’t get my head bitten off for insinuating that Gibbs isn’t able to handle everything that life throws at him, she will almost certainly take the same stance as DiNozzo. Or maybe Doctor Mallard who, while certainly qualified enough to tell me for certain whether Jethro is okay, is entirely unlikely to throw his friend to ‘the wolves’, so to speak.” Tim stares at her, her voice having gotten more agitated as she goes on. “What I’m trying to say, Agent McGee, is that you’re the only one on that team who I trust to tell me the truth, because you aren’t blinded by either friendship or indiscriminate loyalty. So, I ask again. Is Special Agent Gibbs ready for duty?”

Tim looks down at his feet, face flushing red with anger at the heavy insult behind her words, no matter how she intends them. When he speaks, his voice isn’t the confident tone he’d been aiming for but, instead, a pained mumble.  

“Pardon me, Agent McGee?”

He knows that she heard him. He takes a breath and repeats himself, louder. “I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

Tim walks into Ducky’s autopsy one morning and finds Tony and Abby with their heads bent close together, both springing up guiltily when he walks in. “What’s wrong?” he asks, seeing Ducky’s eyes slide over to him from where he’s cutting into a corpse.

“None of your business, McCurious,” Tony snaps, tone edgy.

Abby grins, and it’s not as reassuring as she seems to think it is. “It’s nothing. Just you know… stuff.”

“What was that about?” McGee asks Palmer after the two conspirators have bolted from autopsy, both looking at him guiltily on the way out. Palmer just makes an odd noise and walks away, face flushing.

 

* * *

 

“Tony is avoiding Gibbs.” Ziva crowds behind his desk, leaning down and murmuring into his ear in an effort to be sneaky in an office filled with workers possessing preternaturally enhanced hearing. “Every time Gibbs speaks to him, he jumps like a bear in headlights and makes an excuse to be elsewhere.”

“That’s none of our business, Ziva,” Tim answers, frowning and typing harder than necessary as a few heads tilt curiously in their direction. “They have to work things out on their own.”

“We are being kept out of the hoop from something,” she continues. “Ducky has had four infectious autopsies this week, four! And Abby is acting strangely as well. She has even stopped drinking her caffeine punch drinks. I believe she is trying to dissuade Gibbs from visiting her lab.”

Tim frowns as an email alert pops up on his monitor, clicking it and hissing in air through clenched teeth at what it says. “Ziva…”

“What?”

“Why is Internal Affairs interviewing NCIS Agents?”

 

* * *

 

It takes another two days of watching Tony make increasingly desperate attempts to avoid being in the same room as Gibbs before Tim does something. Even with Gibbs’ newfound disconnection from his team, neither Tim nor Ziva miss the moment when Gibbs turns to bark an order at Tony and flinches when he finds the desk empty.

Which is how Tim finds himself walking up the front path to Gibbs’ door and knocking carefully.

“Open,” calls the familiar voice.

Tim walks in to find his boss sitting in his armchair, studying the couch intently. “McGee. You aware that, while I was gone, DiNozzo was sleeping here?”

Tim blinks, glancing at the couch and wondering how Gibbs can tell. It’s not like Tony has a scent to pick up on, unless he overdoes it with the cologne. If he hadn’t wanted anyone to know he’d been there, it’s unlikely they’d find out. Unless he _had_ wanted Gibbs to know…

“No,” he says finally. “I didn’t know that.”

Gibbs nods once. “Spent more time here than home, I’d wager. Why would he do that, you think?”

Tim wonders how much of the hospital Gibbs actually remembers. “Because he missed you.”

“Funny way of showing it when he can’t even be in the same room as me anymore.”

Tim almost gasps at the audible pain in those words. _Damnit, DiNozzo. What are you doing?_

 

* * *

 

“Your job is not done because Gibbs has been found,” Ziva spits one day, looking for all the world like her cheetah form, ruffled and calculating. “He stills needs you, Tony.”

“He’s fine, Ziva. I’ve been busy, okay? Keep out of it.”

“If you believe he is fine, then you are a fool. He is breaking.”

Tony doesn’t answer, and Tim wonders how long they’ve got before they reach that point.

 

* * *

 

It’s Fornell, of all people, who delivers the final blow. “We raided the last of their strongholds this morning,” he states one day, looking exhausted and thin. “Any of them left are scattered, we’ll round them up. It’s over, Gibbs.” Gibbs pulls the photos of the raid towards himself, flicking through them slowly and studying each one as though looking for someone. Tim sees the exact moment he finds what he’s looking for, hand pausing on one of the photos and face turning masklike. Fornell peers at it. “Yeah, I’ll be buggered how they managed that one. Looks like they were trying to flee the country with the poor thing, suicidal if you ask me. How far could they have gotten with a dragon?”

“A dragon?” Ziva asks with interest, standing and peering at the images. She doesn’t seem to notice the way Gibbs has pulled back, as though he’s received news he’s been dreading and is trying to protect himself from it. “Where did they get a dragon?”

“What does it matter where they got him?” Gibbs snaps, voice cracking. Three faces turn to him, shocked at the slight loss of control. “He’s dead now. Dead, and no one knew his name, not even me.” Fornell makes a soft noise, as though about to ask something, but Gibbs picks up his coat and pushes past him without acknowledging him.

He walks out, and they let him go.


	21. Tony and the Quitter

“Boss?” Tony stands nervously as Gibbs strides in the next morning, expression alive in a way it hasn’t been since he’d returned to work. None of them are sure what to expect after his abrupt departure the night before. And, in the end, it’s nothing any of them _would_ have expected—especially not Tony. Gibbs picks up his badge, turning it over and examining it carefully, his finger rubbing at the brass. It’s a thoughtful, deliberate gesture, and Tony is inexplicably terrified to see it. “Kept it clean for you while you were gone,” he tries to joke, walking over to his desk and feeling Tim and Ziva’s eyes on them. It feels a bit like too little, too late, and he curses the preoccupation of the last week just as much as he knows how necessary it is. They can’t let Gibbs see the secrets they’re hiding, know the lengths they’ve gone for him. That knowledge will destroy him, especially when he’s already fragile.

Gibbs looks up, smiles, and, for a second, Tony thinks everything is finally going to be okay.

“You’ll do,” Gibbs says to him. Tony’s grinning at the assumed compliment before his brain catches up to what it actually means. “It’s your team now. Been your team for a while, DiNozzo.” And he tosses the badge at him, Tony catching it against his chest by reflex. It’s still warm.

He’s gone before they have a chance to respond, and it feels like a betrayal.

 

* * *

 

The walk up the path to Gibbs’ front door is a familiar one, made less so by the comforting glow of light from the front window. Tony wonders what it says about their friendship that he’s come to associate a cold and empty house more with them than a warm and inviting one. He doesn’t knock. He doesn’t want to give his boss a chance to avoid this conversation.

“You need to leave,” Gibbs says as soon as he walks in, studying him from the top of the stairs. It’s unsettling, as though he’s given himself the advantage of height in case of attack. Something drags at Tony’s instincts, telling him to circle around and get behind the wolf.

Cats aren’t the only ones who attack from behind.

“Why?” he asks, instead leaning against the wall and jutting his chin out stubbornly, letting it be clear he isn’t moving without having his say. “So you can pack up and run away? Since when do Marines run away?”

“I’m retiring.”

“The hell you are.” Tony tries to steady his breathing, knowing that Gibbs can hear the slamming of his vampiric heart—it beats wrong, but it still _beats,_ and, right now, that betrays his weakness. “If you run from this, you’re going to spend your whole life running. It won’t ever stop haunting you. You have to face it, Boss.”

“Like you faced your past?”

Tony almost flinches. Almost. “I didn’t run from that. My past knows exactly where I am and what I’m doing, and every day I keep doing it is another day I’m showing him that I’m not afraid of what he tried to make of me.”

Gibbs settles back onto his feet and Tony releases a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding as the tension dissipates slightly. “You don’t know… You can’t know what it was like,” Gibbs murmurs softly, almost to himself.

“How can we if you don’t let us in to help you? What would you do if this was the other way around? We can work this out, Gibbs, you just gotta snap out of it!”

This time, Gibbs does flinch, a shadow of something flickering over his face. “You need to leave. Now.”

So, Tony does.

 

* * *

 

Tony is drunk. He’s not entirely sure how he’s so drunk, except, judging by the overwhelming aftertaste of old pennies in the back of his throat, he’s pretty sure he had help. He’d forgotten how good even cheap alcohol tastes when it was filtered through someone else’s blood, especially when that someone is young, pretty, and ever so keen to find out what it’s like in a vampire’s bed. His buzz lasts right until he pushes open the door to his apartment and finds his co-workers in his living room, Tim shuffling through his DVDs and Ziva pacing with a bored expression. She turns and wrinkles her nose in disgust, immediately scenting exactly what he’s been up to. Whatever. Prude. People fuck, deal with it.

“How did you get in?” Tony slurs, shoving the door shut and stumbling in, wondering if the words sound as bad coming out of his mouth as they do in his head. Even his brain isn’t forming sounds right.

“Ziva let me in,” Tim stutters. Tony doesn’t know why he’s so nervous—Tony might stink of blood and beer with his shirt probably splattered a bit red, but it’s not like Tim’s got anything Tony wants. Heh. In his throat or his pants. But, his eyes rake over Tony’s dishevelled appearance and take on a concerned gleam. “I came around to check on you, and she was—”

“Picking the lock on your door,” Ziva finishes, smirking. “You should have better security.”

“I do,” Tony informs her, white teeth flashing as he bares them. “Now get the fuck out.”

“Tony, we are concerned. You left work very quickly, and we went to Gibbs’ and found it…”

“Empty,” Tony says, nausea raging in his gut and threatening to have him heaving up the contents of his stomach. He wonders if Ziva will panic at the sight of him vomiting blood, then figures that she’ll probably just roll her eyes at him. It might frighten the probie though. He’d better contain it, it wouldn’t do to frighten the probie. His probie. His probie for good now.

No frightening his probie, Gibbs won’t like that. If Gibbs was here to care.

Which he isn’t.

He shoves past her and slips into his room, dropping onto the bed and curling into himself to try and hold himself together. If they try to follow him, he doesn’t respond. They’ll go eventually. And he doesn’t hear them leave but, when he wakes up in the morning with a thumping head and watering eyes, he finds a basin next to his bed with a glass of water on the bedside table.

It’s a wordless reminder that Gibbs might be gone, but they still have a duty to each other.

 

* * *

 

“Internal Affairs is sniffing around.”

Abby turns morose green eyes on him, Bert leaning against her leg. “Is that really what you came down here to talk about, Tony?”

Tony frowns at her. “Well, considering we’re attempting to cover up a first-degree felony, yes. Yes, it is what I’ve come down here to talk about. Funny, that. The things we prioritise when we could be going to _federal prison,_ Abby.”

She shrugs, turning back to her work of reassembling the Gibbs Wall. Tony could have told her that she’d been hasty in dismantling it the moment Gibbs had walked back into the bullpen. Optimistic, not like him. He’d always known the return was temporary—that’s why he wasn’t upset by Gibbs being gone, not even a little. He’s a little upset by her ignoring him though, and pouts.

Abby finally speaks: “There’s nothing here for them to find. I haven’t cast anything in weeks now, another few weeks and they won’t even be able to pick up traces of blood magic on me. Ducky should already be clear, and it will take them longer than that to get a warrant for a magic scan—especially if I fight it on grounds of it being stupidly invasive with no basis for recommendation.”

Tony sidles past Bert to glare angrily at the wall, Gibbs’ face looking back at him showing the range of the man’s facial expressions. There isn’t much of a range, to be honest. It’s a pretty boring wall. “Why are you putting that back up?” he asks shortly. “He’s not coming back this time.”

“You shouldn’t take it so personally,” Abby replies, smoothing a bent corner of a picture down with more love than the occupant of the photo deserves. “He’s not doing this to hurt you. He went through hell.”

_So did we,_ Tony wants to say, but doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

“I’m not inviting you in.” Tony pushes his door shut, swearing as Tim shoves a solid foot into the crack. “Damnit, Probie, I could have broken your foot!”

“Doubt it,” he replies cheerily. “I’m harder than I look. I brought movies!”

Tony opens the door again, eyeing the DVDs. “They’re all geeky sci-fi nerdathons, aren’t they?”

Tim blinks. “No,” he lies, holding the bag behind his back.

Tony sighs, stepping aside. “Fine. Whatever. But you better have brought popcorn. And if I see one pointy-eared elf, you’re buying pizza. It’s bad enough we have one in HR.”

“Deal.”

 

* * *

 

“I don’t actually require babysitters,” he’s forced to say another day when he picks up his coat to leave and finds Ziva standing in front of him with a terrifyingly friendly expression.

“I am going down to the gym to work out,” she says, tying her dark hair back in a loose ponytail and smirking at him. “I thought perhaps you would like to come and, what is the saying? Blow up some steam?”

“It’s let off some steam, Ziva.”

She smiles again. It’s a dangerously hot smile—and he doesn’t like his hot when it comes with a serve of ‘dangerous’. He likes his trouble at work, not in bed. “Not the way I do it.”

He doesn’t doubt that at all.

Tony tilts his head to the side and observes her. He really doesn’t feel like having his ass handed to him by a woman half his size in front of half the agency. “I’ll pass. I prefer my limbs unbroken.”

She actually looks disappointed, and a small kick of guilt burns in his belly. Suddenly, her face lights up and she grins. “How about the firing range then?” she suggests. “Winner buys drinks.”

He laughs, the sound strange coming from his throat. He hasn’t laughed in a while, he realises.

“You’re on, kitty.”

 

* * *

 

When Abby and Palmer show up at his house another night, he just sighs and lets them in. “Smart move,” Palmer informs him, walking in under Tony’s outstretched arm and craning his head back to look up at him. “When Kate died, Abby almost blew my door up letting herself in.”

“Are you here to make me watch awful movies as well?” Tony asks Abby warily, eyeing the bag she’s holding in one hand.

She pulls out a six-pack, tossing it to him. “Nah. We’re here to get plastered. I figure if we’re all going to be miserable, we’re going to do it together. And Jimbo is hilarious when you get him smashed.”

Palmer blinks slowly. “I’m really not,” he says sadly. “I get weepy.”

Tony takes a beer. He’s sure going to need it.

 

* * *

 

“And that stupid face he does! You know the one, where he twitches one eyebrow and furrows his forehead and looks at you like you’ve just disappointed his grandma or something!” Abby takes a swig of her beer and tries to replicate the look, going cross-eyed.

“Oh yeah, that fucking _look_ ,” Tony slurs, imagining it perfectly even with Abby’s mediocre impersonation. The world spins slowly around him, the cans of beer reluctant to empty. He has a suspicion that Abby has jinxed them but isn’t actually sure if that’s possible. He wants to ask but is too busy being really, really angry. “Look at me, I’m Jeh-heh- _thro_ Gibbs and I’m going to storm around and be gruff all the time!” He’s muttering to the floor, having slid off the couch at some point. “I was in Desert Storm, boy, so you better buck up and listen to me even though I never say anything! Instead, I communicate in grunts because I’m emotionally constipated!”

“And when he’d magically just show up in my lab and ask for something impossible and be like, ‘I want it ten minutes ago, Abs!’ God, that annoyed me! Did that annoy anyone else?” Abby pauses, her can at her mouth. “And when he’d call me Abs… and bring me a Caf-Pow. Goddammit, he doesn’t even know how to turn his computer on! We don’t need that in our team! Do you think he even knows what an iPad is?”

Tony ignores the weepy tone beginning to rise in her voice. “Now, DiNozzo! What am I paying you for? Grab your goddamned gear and get in the van because these are the only things I know how to communicate without grunting! I have the emotional range of your left toe, Di _No_ -zzo, so don’t expect anything like loyalty from me even though I expect the world of you!”

Palmer sits completely silently, watching them with Echo in his lap.

“He used to hug me,” Abby says in the silence that’s abruptly fallen.

“I miss being head-slapped,” Tony admits, leaning his chin on the couch and looking up at her.

Abby smacks him gently on the back of the head. “I can be gruff if you want,” she offers. “If I can have a hug in return?” She slips down next to him as he nods and curls into his arms. Palmer’s mouth seems to be twitching slightly.

“It’s not the same,” Tony mutters eventually.

“It’s never going to be,” Palmer says, draining his beer and balancing the can on a DVD rack.

 

* * *

 

“You look hungover, Anthony, my boy,” Ducky tells him when Tony slouches into autopsy the next day. He’s stopped whatever he was doing, sharp gaze instantly discerning Tony’s motivation for being there. “But you’re not here to hear about my mother’s famous hangover cure, are you?”

“Is it okay to move on from this?” Tony asks after a long moment.

Ducky finishes washing his hands and takes a paper towel, thoughtfully patting them dry. “The only other option other than moving on is to stay still, and that’s not something any of us have ever been good at. Jethro is doing what is best for himself. Because of you, he has that option. Moving on is what he would have wanted you to do.”

“Is it though?”

A soft chuckle. “Anthony, Jethro has many good qualities. He is a man to be admired, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of your respect for him in the face of what you feel to be a momentous betrayal. But his biggest failure, and one that you are paying for right now, is his inability to express to those around him just how deeply he cares. That is his cross to bear, not yours.”

“So, what do I do?” Tony is lost. He’s starting to see that perhaps he might not be the only one to feel that way.

But Ducky’s still there. “We move on. And we heal.”

 

* * *

 

Gibbs pads up the sandy beach, the grit strange on the delicate skin of his paws. Words can’t quite capture the surreal sensation of looking as a wolf to the horizon and seeing endless waves and sky, instead of a series of bars and walls.

_“Never figured you out as a quitter, Marine.”_ Franks looks down at him from the roughshod shelter he’s been living in. Gibbs eyes it carefully, noting where a beam of wood could improve the structure, or a sheet could be added to stop stray gusts of wind.

_“It’s called retiring, Franks. I always did follow your lead.”_

There’s almost laughter in the other wolf’s voice when he responds. _“We’ll see. You’ll be tearing out your tail in a month tops with nothing to do. You’re no beach hound, Probie.”_


	22. Jimmy and the Cheetah

The strangest thing about working down in autopsy, Jimmy has found, is that time moves strangely. Things happen above them a lot faster than down here with the dead people, and they’re privy to only flashes of insight into the lives of the rest of their team. The morgue is like a wrinkle in time where things move slower, which was why it really only feels like it’s been days, maybe a week tops, since Gibbs had walked out of NCIS, but in actual fact it’s going on past a month now. In this time, Jimmy only sees the freshly reinstated, and now permanent, team leader of the MRCT twice and, both times, it’s like looking at what Jimmy fancies a younger Gibbs would have looked like. They both seemed to be stuck on the same path.

Well, almost. Tony always has had that stubborn streak.

Jimmy walks into autopsy one day and finds that everything from his desk is now floating several feet above the surface and well out of his reach. Even flapping awkwardly up there does little to dissuade his stationary from relinquishing its new home in the air, and he ends up balancing his chair on the desk surface and sitting on it like a particularly ungainly bird, doing his paperwork in mid-air.

“Is there something we need to discuss, Mr. Palmer?” Ducky asks, face locked in an expression of very mild surprise. “I wasn’t aware that you were predisposed to gymnastics in order to get the inventory files in order.”

Jimmy can’t help the grin that covers his face. “Oh no, Doctor Mallard, it’s fine,” he says, beaming. “It’s just _Tony_.”

 

* * *

 

For once Abby doesn’t make him walk into the lab along a very narrow path of ‘Jimmy’s Safe Space’; instead, scooping him up and spinning around with him in the centre of the room. “What? What’s going on?” he yelps, trying not to cling to her as his feet whirl in mid-air.

“Someone stole the _Wicked Witches of Wisconsin_ magazine I had in my bottom drawer,” she cheers, dropping him and doing an odd little dance on the spot. “Do you know what that means, Jimmy?”

“Someone’s been going through your stuff? You should really charm your drawers shut.”

“No, no!” she says, looking like she’s about to cry. “ _Tony’s back!_ ”

 

* * *

 

“Tony seems happier,” Jimmy says when he returns to autopsy, still dizzy from his impromptu spinning hug.

Ducky hums non-committedly. “Perhaps, Mr. Palmer. But the true test of happiness is how we are when there is no one around to observe our sadness.”

 

* * *

 

He isn’t expecting to be pulled from autopsy with a request to speak with officers from Internal Affairs. The last he’d heard, they’re only interested in agents. With his heart in his mouth, Jimmy frantically recites in his head the tale Ducky had told him so long ago to tell, when they’d first heard whispers of an investigation. He’s honestly surprised it’s taken them this long to turn their noses towards the MCRT.

_Abby helps Ducky with his mother a lot. Abby was with Ducky. Wait, am I even supposed to mention Abby? What if they don’t ask? What do I say then?_

“Mr. Palmer,” the lady begins smoothly. Jimmy swallows and lifts his gaze up over the table to meet her eyes, startling as he notes the small, spiral horn on her forehead. “We would like to ask you a few questions about one of your colleagues.”

_Here we go, Jimmy. It’s all on you. Abby helps—_

“What can you tell us about Officer David?”

 

* * *

 

Tony is juggling apples with a determined expression, tongue peeking out from between his lips as he concentrates. Jimmy absently wonders if he’d be trying so hard to appear normal if Ziva and Tim weren’t sitting at their desks watching him. “Can we talk?” he hisses, sidling up beside Tony and glancing nervously over to Ziva’s desk. She looks up, green eyes meeting his, and frowns.

“Who let you out of the duck pond?” Tony asks, dropping the apples and almost smacking Jimmy in the head with one. “Does Ducky know you’re loose?”

“Tony!” he says again, stressing the worried tone. “I had my meeting with _Internal Affairs_.”

Tony’s smile barely flickers, but Jimmy is abruptly aware of a looming presence behind him. He pulls his wings in tighter, turning reluctantly to face the intimidating Mossad agent.

“And?” she asks with a calm he knows is deceptive.

“They… they asked about you,” he admits. Behind him, Tony makes a cut-off noise.

“Oh, is that all?” she says finally, shrugging. “Well, I have nothing to fear, I have done nothing wrong.” She walks away, and Jimmy can’t help noticing that Tony isn’t smiling anymore. Instead, he stands and gestures for Jimmy to follow him.

“I’m not worried,” Tony tells him as he follows him into the elevator, “so, you shouldn’t be either. Her dad has probably just got someone’s panties in a twist, and they’re giving her the stink eye as a warning to him to back off.”

“They asked about her magical abilities,” Jimmy says. “Why would they ask about that if they’re just trying to get a rise out of her father?”

Tony pulls a face. “Don’t worry about it, Palmer, it’s nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Jimmy wakes up to someone trying to belt his door down. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he calls, staggering out of bed and blinking blearily as the lights flicker on without him touching them. Echo wanders past, tail wagging, and he hears the door clicking open. Sometimes, it’s incredibly useful living with a magical dog. There’s silence follow this, and then Abby appears in his doorway, her eyes wild. He hurriedly grabs a shirt and holds it in front of himself, hiding his periodic table boxer shorts. “Abby! What are you doing here?” he yelps, glancing at his old-fashioned alarm clock. It stands on the gutted remains of two digital alarm clocks, both fried by his ability to destroy any electrical device he touches.

“Ziva’s in trouble,” Abby says, the gleam of light from the hallway casting shadows on her face. “They think she murdered someone.”

Jimmy stares at her. “What?”

“They found Charles Sterling’s body in an alley, and they’re saying necromancy killed him. Ziva’s on camera following him in there. They think she did it. She’s on the _run_ , Jimmy!”

Oh.

Well, heck.

 

* * *

 

“This is ridiculous, Ziva isn’t a witch.” Even Ducky looks stunned by this turn of events, clothes and hair uncharacteristically ruffled. “She’s a _therian_ , she hasn’t got a single iota of magic that isn’t shifting related.”

“Yeah, well, they’re trying to say she was sent into the country as a spy to help the slavers get a foothold,” Tony says bluntly. “And, without Ziva, we can’t prove otherwise.”

“Why did she run?” Abby asks, curling her knees up against her chest. “We know she’s innocent, we all know she’s innocent, so why’d she run?”

Jimmy is the first to realise, seeing Tony follow seconds later. “Because she was protecting someone,” he says slowly.

Abby looks up and meets his eyes, her own horrified. “Oh no,” she whispers.

Tony stands to leave, his movements jerky and his mind clearly a million miles away. McGee is hot on his heels. Jimmy steps in front of them, peering up and asking, “What do we do?”

“We wait,” Tony replies shortly. “We can’t risk making a move without knowing what she’s planning first.”

“But she needs our help,” McGee protests, left out of the loop of what the rest of them now. “We can’t just let her take the fall for whoever it is she’s protecting, she’s one of us!” Abby flinches and buries her head in her hands, thankfully out of McGee’s view. Tony doesn’t even glance at her, nothing in his cool bearing suggesting that the answer to McGee’s unspoken question is sitting behind him in combat boots hastily pulled on over duck flannel pyjamas.

“Ziva can look after herself,” Tony says. “We wait and we follow her lead when she contacts us.”

McGee looks disgusted, shoving past Tony and stepping over Jimmy. “You can do that if you want,” he spits back over his shoulder. “Just because Gibbs turned his back on you, doesn’t mean you can do the same to the rest of us. I’m going to help her. _Alone,_ if that’s what you want.”

And then he’s gone.

“This is becoming a theme, dear Anthony.” Ducky looks unsettled. “Our colleagues storming out in a huff.”

Tony growls. “Yeah, well, the difference is, McGee is coming back.”

Jimmy hopes that he’s right. There are already too many empty spaces in the room.


	23. Ziva and the Curse

One thing has lasted from the time Gibbs had been gone: Ziva still runs at night.

This is how she finds herself jogging past a familiar form walking along the street. She doubles back in shock just in time to see Chip grin wickedly at her and dart down an alley. She gives chase, of course she does. Habits die hard. But it is not until she turns a corner and finds herself facing the eerily calm looking Chip that she considers perhaps she has made a mistake.

“How is it that for people who pride themselves on teamwork, NCIS always seem to walk into danger alone?” Chip asks her, magic glittering around his palm.

She eyes his hand warily, the usual deep green of the pixie’s magic shot through with a deep red overlay that makes her skin prickle. She is no stranger to the dangers of necromancy and has no intentions of allowing the pixie to drain her of life in this filthy alley. “You speak as though I am in danger from you,” she sneers, stepping back with senses on overdrive. It is unlikely the man is alone, and the last thing her team needs is a repeat of the Gibbs incident with her as bait.

“It’s Charles,” he snaps back, voice as whiny and irritating as she recalls. It is almost an insult that he has managed to slip under the radar for so long and deceive them.

She owes him some bruises. “Are you going to try and strangle me into submission again?” she asks coldly. “I think you will find that difficult when I am human.”

He grins. “Oh no. I don’t need to do anything. You’re already screwed, David. You see, you were seen following me in here on camera, and I made sure to look nice and scared for our viewers. Now, you’re going to kill me, and they’re going to see you fleeing the scene.”

Ziva chokes back a laugh. “One problem with that _plan—_ I have no intention of killing you.”

He shrugs. “No worries. I’m already dead anyway, they made sure of that. I know too much, and the FBI is closing in. I figured I might as well let my death be one last blow against that prick, Tony DiNozzo. What better than taking out his little necromancer with me?”

She is not laughing anymore. “Necromancy? I am not a necromancer.”

He snorts. “Bullshit you’re not. Mikal gave me tons of info on you in return for me telling him where the fighting was being held. He said it was for a friend, dark haired and beautiful. Imagine my surprise when I saw him leaving his home accompanied by _you_ of all people. I would have thought, with your looks, you could do better.”

“I was arresting him, you fool!” she cries, feeling the air beginning to itch with what she fears is a very nasty death curse. It certainly feels like one, the oppressive sensation that makes her ears pop and bones ache a distinctive feeling that is never really forgotten. Seconds later, it clicks. Necromancy. _Abby._

Oh, Abby. You silly, _silly_ woman.

“Here it comes,” Chip whispers, closing his eyes. “Don’t think of trying to talk your way out of this—I made sure there was plenty of evidence to bring you down with me.”

Ziva turns and runs as the curse kicks in, feeling the soft push of it on her back. She makes sure to look at the camera as she exits the alley.

If they cannot find a way out of this, better her than Abby.

 

* * *

 

It is foolish, but she makes the call anyway.

“Gibbs?” Abby yells into her ear, heartbreakingly hopeful.

“No, and do not say my name out loud.”

There is a long silence. “Why are you doing this?” Abby finally says, voice low. “You don’t need to cover for me, Zi—Kate. I know what I did was wrong, okay, and I’m going to talk to them about it.”

“Absolutely not. You will destroy your career, your life.”

“I’m not letting them think you’re… like your brother, Kate. That’s what they think, you know? We don’t, none of us do, but there’s only so much we can do without me fessing up.”

“Nonsense. You can get me a phone number.”

And, Abby does. Ziva dials that number hoping upon hope that this is the right choice. And, he answers. He sounds… happy. Well, perhaps not happy. But, relaxed. Mexico has been kind to him.

It breaks her heart to bring that crashing down.

“Hola!” she says with mock cheer into the phone, something harsh and scratchy building in the back of her throat. “How is Mexico?”

There is shocked silence in response. “Ziva?” Gibbs’ voice is grating, as though he is unused to speaking out loud as of late. “How did you get this number?”

“Abby. If it helps, I forced it out of her.”

He snorts. “No. It doesn’t. What’s wrong?”

The scratchy feeling intensifies, and suddenly Ziva is concerned that she may be about to bawl on the phone to a man she is not even sure cares anymore. “Why does something have to be wrong? Can I not call an old friend? Do some catching up?”

The silence returns, and she realises this is a mistake. She should not have called him.

“Today, Ziva.” His voice is softer, and there is a touch of concern that breaks her.

“I may… I may be in a little bit of trouble.”

“Define _little_.”

This is not going to be a fun conversation for either of them. She decides to do it fast—like ripping off a band-aid. “I am wanted by the FBI and NCIS on suspected charges of necromancy, murder, and espionage.”

He starts coughing, as though he had been drinking something when she had spoken. “Geez, Ziva! The hell did you do?”

“I did nothing. It is a frame-up.”

“Well, DiNozzo—”

“Cannot help me. None of them can, I cannot implicate them in this.” She counts his breaths as he pauses.

“I’m three-thousand miles away and _retired_ , Ziva,” he says finally. “What do you want me to do?”

Now she is crying and, worse, she hears the startled intake of breath that means he has noticed. She cannot help the hiccup in her voice when she speaks again, even as she loathes how weak it makes her sound. But maybe it is not such a bad thing that she allows herself to be weak in front of Gibbs. “I was… I was hoping you would save me. Please.”

 

* * *

 

It smells of Gibbs and sawdust in the basement, and the scent is strangely comforting. It is odd to sit by the untouched hull of a half-built boat and to think of a time when Tony had sat down here seeking that same comfort. Just as alone as she is now. It makes her hurt for him.

“You wanna tell me just who you’re protecting?” grumbles a gruff voice that she knows instantly.

She leaps up, turning to face a tanned Gibbs who watches her with soft, blue eyes that are nothing like the cold ones he’d worn when he’d left. There is still a shade of darkness is them, but it is nothing that they don’t all share with him. She flings herself into his arms, allowing herself one last moment of weakness. If this goes wrong, it will be the final weakness she is allowed. “Why do you think I am protecting someone?” she mumbles into his shirt, feeling his arms tighten around her.

“Because there’s no way anyone could believe you’re capable of necromancy unless you’re deliberately avoiding capture to ensure they don’t realise that?” He pulls back, glaring down at her. “It’s a simple test to see if you have blood magic, and you don’t. So why aren’t you taking it?”

She looks away, unwilling to tell a secret that is not hers to share.

“Abby,” says a second voice, just as grim. Ziva tenses. Calvary is here, and she is in trouble. “But you already know that, don’t you, Gibbs? There’s no one else she’d go to these lengths for.”

Gibbs flinches, and she feels the confirmation of his worst fears shudder through his wiry body.

“I am protecting family,” she says, looking up at Tony in the doorway. “As is my duty.”

Tony’s face does not shift expression, he just looks blankly to the other man in the room. “So, what do we do?” He does not seem fazed by Gibbs’ presence, as though he had expected this arrival and planned for it.

“You said the curse was already active when you confronted Sterling?” Gibbs asks her. She nods. “Well, we find whoever put the curse on. Give them no reason to look further. Get McGee into Sterling’s records, destroy any mention of necromancy or NCIS. DiNozzo, you get into his house and wipe it clean. Leave no trace. What are you waiting for? Move your ass!”

Tony grins slowly. “Welcome back, Boss.”

“I’m just visiting, DiNozzo. Don’t forget that.”

She stays with Gibbs as Tony vanishes to get to work. They leave town, driving without speaking with her huddled in the passenger seat and Gibbs driving too fast. “Where are we going?” she asks finally, tired of driving endlessly with no clear destination in mind. Gibbs has been silent the whole way, deep in thought, as the scenery outside flickers from city, to suburb, to country.

“Safe house,” he grunts. “You need sleep, I need sleep. We start fresh in the morning. Let DiNozzo have some time to get working on clearing your name, and Abby’s in the process.” There is anger hidden in his tone, tightly restrained but there all the same.

“What she did, she did for you,” she says quietly. “She used it to find you. There is no other reason she would have put herself in danger like this.”

His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel, turning white. “You think that makes this any better, David? Knowing this is my fault?”

No. No, she does not. But that cannot be changed now. She well knew… she’d paved her own path throughout her lifetime, and how much her feet hurt as she walked it now would depend solely upon how good a job she’d done.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs wakes her in the morning. “Get up,” he growls, face flickering in the uneven light from the walls of the unfurnished cabin they’d slept in. “DiNozzo called. They’ve narrowed down the man who cursed Sterling—put a BOLO out on him and got a hit at a roadside motel nearby.”

She stiffens, tension curling up her spine and making her fingers flex reflectively, as though readying claws. “What do we do when we capture him?”

Gibbs raises an eyebrow. “We detain him, David. By all accounts, Chip’s the one who knew about a necromancer in NCIS, not this guy. Last thing we need is another dead body with your paw prints on it.”

A pity, she thinks.

 

* * *

 

The cell-phone rings again in the car. “Problem, DiNozzo?” Gibbs barks into it as Ziva turns it to speaker and places it in between them.

“Little one. Maybe. How far are you from our target?”

“Five minutes, give or take. Why?”

A sheepish grunt issues through. “Because our networks have a massive security hole in them apparently. I’m right behind you, but you might want to move faster.”

Gibbs makes an irritated noise, pressing down harder on the accelerator even as he glances at the phone waiting for more information. “Who we racing there?”

“Well you see, Boss, we kinda pissed him off and he stormed off and I thought, hey! Let the kid cool off, give him some time off the court, he’ll come back… except he must have been using the network yesterday and he saw Abby’s BOLO and, well…”

The car yanks to the left as Gibbs jerks his head around to stare at the phone. “Are you talking about _McGee_?” he snarls. “Because if you’re telling me McGee is heading here, _alone_ , to attempt to detain a _necromancer_ …”

Ziva glances down at the map while Gibbs yells, noting the way the road they are on spirals around before curving back towards their destination. “Stop the car,” she says, Gibbs slowing as he turns to her curiously, half his attention still on DiNozzo’s voice. “I will meet you there.” And she’s out of the car, shifting easily with the sound of Gibbs tearing after her as a wolf following her. Well, he can try. But, over a short distance, the cheetah is queen. And she beats Gibbs, of course she does.

She does not beat McGee. She has never been quite so glad to see him as when he turns to look at her with shock visible in his eyes. Her sides are heaving and nostrils flaring as her body overcompensates for the massive burst of energy her speed has taken from her. There is a price to pay for everything, after all. Shifting back, she glares up at him from her seated position on the gravelled drive, still struggling to catch her breath. “You are a fool,” she snaps. “You would have gone in alone and been killed, on _my_ behalf.” The implication is clear: she is not worth that.

 “You’re trying to get yourself arrested as a necromancer on Abby’s behalf. How is this any different?” He rolls his eyes at her surprised look. “Of course I know. I’m not an idiot. Who else would you do this for? Certainly not Tony.”

She opens her mouth to reply, but a gleam of something in the window behind him catches her eye. Sniper. Aimed at her.

Damn.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs is fast, but he’s no match for a cheetah at top speed. And he’s really going to need to talk to her about that, because there’s a price to be paid for her speed, and it’s not one he wants her paying after running straight into an unknown situation. He should have left _McGee_ in charge. At least then she wouldn’t have ended up on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Damn Tony.

The motel comes into view, and McGee is standing a few feet away from Ziva, looking pissed. She’s looking past him with a distant expression.

Gibbs follows the line of her eyes and, suddenly, it’s a year ago and he’s on that roof with Kate, a sniper aiming at one of his people. The same gut-wrenching sensation of everything being both very still and moving far too fast, not giving him time to react. Not again, he thinks numbly. Not this time.

This is his bullet to take.

 _“Ziva!”_ he roars, charging forward right as McGee realises that something’s wrong and turns his own head to follow Ziva’s gaze. Gibbs is still strides away from them when McGee flings himself forward to knock Ziva down, the sound of the gun echoing hollowly throughout the grounds moments later.

They both fall and neither gets up.


	24. Tim and the Foggy Path

Ducky is wearing an expression that Gibbs has never seen before, a drawn-out fear that makes his muscles clench unpleasantly. “What you’re asking us to do…” Ducky murmurs, leaning over the still body on the autopsy table. “Jethro, do you have any idea of the magnitude of your request?”

There’s a soft knock at the door behind them. Gibbs turns his head to see Tony and Abby on the other side of the autopsy door, the red light of the infectious autopsy warning beacon casting deep shadows onto their faces. Palmer silently ghosts over, letting them in and stepping back as the door reseals. Abby’s eyes are locked on the table as soon as she enters, wide and filled with blank, unseeing dismay that Gibbs had last seen on Tony’s face on a bloody rooftop last May. “We can fix this, can’t we?” she asks softly, her voice hollow.

Ducky’s face stills with the kind of determination that means he’s decided on a course of action. “We’re going to damn well try,” he vows. “You should all leave. If… if we are caught, the consequences would be catastrophic.”

“No one leaves,” Tony replies sharply. “We do this together.”

Gibbs nods, looking down at the slack face of a friend he isn’t going to fail “No one leaves,” he repeats, locking his gaze stubbornly on sightless eyes. “And that means you too.”

Dead or not, Tim better be listening.

 

* * *

 

Tim sits up in a familiar park and finds that he’s standing in front of himself. It takes him a couple of seconds to realise that the child version of himself isn’t actually looking back at him, instead gazing off enviously after a group of other kids playing with a ball, scuffing polished shoes defiantly in the dirt.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” someone asks, and he turns his head to see Sarah walking towards them, carefully avoiding the patches of mud. “You know they’re not going to play with us. We’re not like them.”

“We could be,” young Tim complains, face falling when a parent looks over and shoos her child in the opposite direction. “What makes us so different?”

Sarah reaches up to the back of her neck and rubs it self-consciously. “This,” she replies shortly, the sigil gleaming under her small fingers. “So long as we have this, we’re never going to fit in anywhere.” Both Tims copy her movement, reaching up to touch the back of their necks.

The smaller Tim sighs and turns away to follow his sister home.

The older Tim freezes as his fingers find nothing, and the park fades around him. Something wet runs along his face and he blinks to find Echo leaning over him, wagging her tail with woeful eyes. “Hey, girl,” he greets her, reaching up his hand to pat her curly head. She rumbles happily and licks his fingers, entire back end wagging in glee. “What are you doing here?” The last thing he remembers is Ziva in cheetah form bristling at him—are they still at that motel? Still working?

“I could ask you the same question,” says a voice that brings back memories of sharp brown eyes and an easy laugh. “You’re not meant to be here, Tim.”

A hand touches his and he lifts his gaze to stare at her, heart hammering. “Kate,” he murmurs, seeing her heartrendingly familiar smile as she crouches to pat Echo as well. “You’re… alive?”

Her mouth thins into a line, as though Tony has just walked in and made another crack about her weight. “Not quite.”

Oh.

Well, damn.

 

* * *

 

If Tim focuses, the fog around him shifts enough to give the vaguest possibility of their location. One time a grassy slope overlooking a river, the next their bullpen. As soon as he relaxes his eyes, it fades away to emptiness again.

“How long has it been?” Kate asks him curiously. “Since I… you know?”

“A year.” He still can’t look at her without something in his chest trying to claw its way out, probably causing irreversible damage in the process. He’d forgotten just how intently he misses her until now, facing her once more. “We never got to say goodbye.”

Kate tucks a loop of hair out of her face, squeezing her eyes shut. “Most of the time, we don’t. Did you? Say goodbye? Before… well, you know. This.” She gestures around.

And there it is. He’s dead. This is the end of Tim McGee, his whole life and everything he’s ever worked for, gone in a moment. Has he really achieved anything?

“No.”

Abby. She’ll have to mourn another friend. Tony… he doesn’t kid himself that Tony will be okay. This’ll destroy him. Ziva will blame herself. Ducky will have to autopsy another friend. Would they have to autopsy him? What’s the procedure with golem remains? He’d never thought to ask, and he can’t dwell on it or he’s going to lose himself to the overwhelming impossibility that Timothy McGee has ceased to exist. “Tony misses you more than you’d believe,” he says, curling Echo’s fur around one finger. “I know he acted like a child, but he really, really cared about you.”

There’s a slow sigh. “I know. I always knew. It doesn’t feel like any time has passed, you know? Time is fluid in this weird place.”

Another sharp kick in his gut. “Is this it? Is this where we stay?”

Echo’s eyes glitter in the light of the limbo they’re in. “No,” Kate says carefully, eyeing the dog. “I don’t think I’ve been here this long. I think… I think Echo is holding us here. Holding you here.”

He sucks in a shocked breath. “What? Why?” The dog just yawns and closes her eyes, ignoring them both. “I’d give anything to say goodbye,” Tim says to no one in particular, just aimlessly voicing his wish, and Kate shivers next to him.

“We can try,” she says softly. And the world fades, fades, and then clears around them, a living Kate holding up a quilt set for Abby to examine. Abby’s face is smoother, lacking all of the lines and stress that have accumulated exponentially over the past few months, and Tim reaches out without thinking to touch her arm. Even though he’s barely a step away from her, his hand falls short and she laughs and turns away without acknowledging him.

“Look at me, buying a quilt set I barely even had enough time to use before I died,” Kate comments, tilting her head to the side. “I don’t even know what happened to my stuff.”

Tim thinks of the ceramic cat with the wonky neck in Abby’s lab, the DVDs on Tony’s shelf that he would never have bought on his own, and the books he himself had added to his collection. He doesn’t say any of that though. “Tony has your wet T-shirt contest picture in his bottom drawer at work,” he says instead, and Kate snorts.

“He would, that ass.”

Tim tries to follow the two women as they begin to walk away, but the floor under him begins to shift in texture, the light changing. “Can we control what we see?” he asks, thinking of his sister.

“I’ve never been able to.”

 

* * *

 

When the world changes again, he’s looking at himself again, but this time it’s like looking in a mirror. Identical, except for the shattered mess of his throat and the empty eyes that gaze accusingly at him. “Christ,” he says, stepping back. The bullet has smashed through his neck, clipping the sigil on the way through. Only two lines of it are broken, but it’s enough to be the end of him. Gibbs is standing over him, and there’s a nightmare in his eyes and blood on his shirt. McGee doesn’t bleed, so he tries not to think about whose it is. Ziva’s there too, and neither of them are speaking. She’s sitting with his head cradled in her lap and, if he looks too closely at her, he’s scared of seeing tears on her face.

“Oh, Gibbs,” Kate breathes, reaching out to touch the older man’s cheek.

Someone ghosts through them, and Tim shivers as Tony appears, looking down in dismayed bewilderment. “What the hell happened?”

“It broke the sigil,” Ziva says to Tim’s body without looking up. “There is nothing that can be done, he is gone.”

Tony shudders. “Like hell he is,” he snarls. “Get him in the car, we’re taking him back to NCIS.”

“What are you thinking?” Gibbs asks him, eyes narrowing.

“Abby.”

And Tony turns; for the barest second, his eyes meet Tim’s. Tim opens his mouth to say something, anything, but something changes.

The world goes dark around them, but Tony is still there.

When McGee meets his eyes once more, it’s no longer Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo that looks back at him, but a cold, harsh, predatory mockery of that man, made of sharp planes and pale lines that chill him to the bone. This isn’t the Tony of ten seconds before, the one scared for his friend and determined to save his life. This isn’t the Tony of NCIS. This isn’t a Tony that Tim’s ever known.

They’re in the dark and Tony is alone.

“Where are we?” Tim gasps, stumbling away from the nightmarish spectre.

Kate shakes her head and she looks as frightened as he feels. “I don’t know. When I first died I tried to see him and this is what I got every time.” She pauses and swallows, reaching down to touch Echo for comfort. “He’s older, Tim.”

_Did I do this to you?_ Tim wonders, looking back at his friend. _Is this what my death causes?_

Tony doesn’t answer him. Just smiles coldly and vanishes into the black.

And Echo whines, touching his hand and leading them away from that place. When the world returns, no longer nothing but black, a smaller version of Echo bounds past, all long curls and floppy legs, leaping excitedly into Palmer’s arms. Tim can’t help but smile shakily at the sight of their smallest friend greeting his new puppy with a delighted, overawed expression, almost as awkward as the dog.

“Are you showing us these?” he asks Echo. She just wags her tail twice, slowly, and lowers her head. She looks tired, and he wonders if that means their time is running out.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t want to see Gibbs again, doesn’t want to see the exhausted acceptance in the man’s posture. He’s a man who’s buried far too many people in his life, and Tim can’t bear the idea that he’s the next in line. It’s surprisingly impossible to come to terms with the fact of his own death. He’s finding that it’s far easier to relate to the grief of another. But, see him again he does and, this time, Tim is stretched out on the autopsy table, still clothed in what he’d been wearing when he’d died. Gibbs stands over him, alone.

“I only wore that shirt today because I split coffee on my normal one, and I left it home to soak,” Tim says, as the thought hits him. “I guess… I guess that doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Gibbs moves, drawing their attention to him, and Kate makes the same broken noise he does when he draws a careful hand down the curve of Tim’s cheek, almost reverently. “Come on, Tim, I didn’t give you leave to be quitting,” he says in a rough voice and, damn it, if _Gibbs_ of all people starts crying in front of him then that will be it for Tim’s sanity. “We don’t walk out on each other. I forgot that.” He closes his eyes, hand resting on Tim’s chest as though waiting for a heartbeat to kick in. “Tony needs you, Probie. He’s lost without you. We all are.”

Tim gapes, unable to find words for the pain in his heart. When he steps forward to try to reach Gibbs, try to do anything to draw the man’s attention to him, his gaze falls on the runes of red drawn around his body and across his neck and chest.

He knows these runes.

Oh no.

“They’re trying to bring me back,” he tells Kate, before turning to the dog. “That’s why you’re holding me here, to give them a chance to bring me back? Is that it?”

Echo just watches him with tired eyes.

“What if they don’t manage it?” he asks, turning back to Gibbs and staring at the new lines on the man’s skin. “Jeez, Kate, this is a one in a million chance. What if they can’t?”

She takes his hand, and he’s never going to take for granted again the ability to touch another human being. “You won’t be alone, no matter what happens.”

He thinks of Tony in the dark. “I’m scared,” he admits.

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

Abby is turning grey as Gibbs watches, the colour leeching from her eyes as her magic drains impossibly quickly; Ducky looks only slightly better.

“We need help, Jethro,” Ducky says, turning his head to affix Gibbs with a serious stare. “We can stop him from slipping away, but we can’t fix his body enough for him to come back. And there’s only so long we can hold him in place before we begin to run the risk of overexerting ourselves and following him.”

It only takes Gibbs a moment to realise who he needs to ring. “I’ll call someone,” he says, reaching down for his phone and finding the rarely used contact list. Each of his team members have them, the numbers that are only to be called if the worst happens. Only to be called if things are at their bleakest.

It’s rare to be calling them for hope.

“I can help too,” murmurs Palmer, ears low and held close to his skull in a frightened posture. He vanishes out the door before any of them can say anything to him.

Gibbs hopes he’s right. They’re going to need all the help they can get.


	25. Us and the Waiting

The man is everything Gibbs remembers him to be—stiff, unpleasant, detached, emotionless—and, if so much didn’t rely on his presence, he’d have chased him out the door with his teeth bared. The air in the room is oppressive and cloying from the built-up power emanating from Abby and Ducky. The two magic wielders sit on either side of the autopsy table, channelling their own spellwork through the runes binding McGee’s spirit to the empty, clay body on the slab.

“The concept of freedom is merely the allowance to choose our own destruction,” Admiral Magus McGee murmurs, leaning close to the shell of his son with a disconnected expression. Gibbs watches with clenched hands held behind his back as the tall man traces narrow fingers along the shattered remains of Tim’s throat. “Is this really the end you had in mind, Thom?”

There’s a low noise behind Gibbs that sounds almost like a growl. “His name is Timothy,” Tony says, moving to stand beside Gibbs as a united front for the first time in what feels like years. “And we didn’t ask you here to question his death. You’re here to save his life.”

 The man raises one careful eyebrow at Tony. “I may not have been the best father in the world, Agent DiNozzo, but I’m not about to stand aside and watch him die, no matter how I feel about the manner of his death. He is first and foremost, _my_ child.”

Gibbs meets his eyes and nods. He sees the truth there. After all, Gibbs had been a father once… there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to bring Kelly back, and that same fire burns in Tim’s father’s eyes.

“How can we help?” Ducky asks in a low, tired voice without lifting his gaze.

“Hold him,” the Magus responds, turning away from Gibbs and the bristling form of Tony. “I can fix the body, but that won’t mean anything if there’s nothing to come back to it.” Gibbs looks away as he begins to set his materials out, pots of sticky glue-like substances and paints made of strange, viscous ingredients. Instead, his regard falls on the small, curled figure by the door, sitting side-by-side with Palmer, her green eyes miserable.

He sits on her other side, wraps an arm around, and pulls Ziva close, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. “This is not your fault,” he whispers into her hair, feeling her shiver.

“Nor yours,” she responds, breath warm and even on his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Abby’s teacher had once warned her that one of the biggest dangers in spell casting was falling prey to tunnel vision: losing yourself so much in the spell that you forgot to hold some of your strength back to keep you alive. They’d all heard the horror stories of people who had wasted away to nothing trapped in the ecstasy of a spell gone terribly right.

This is so much worse.

Every part of her wants to continue weaving the spell and reaching further into the abyss that beckons at them, a vague hint of a shadowy fog that calls her and Ducky’s names intoxicatingly. It’s the sense of everything she’s ever wanted, or could possibly ever need, and it’s right at the edge of her fingertips. Ducky hears that call too but, every time she chances a glance up at him, his face is calm and betrays none of the yearning she knows is written on her own.

“Can you feel him?” the girl who’d arrived with the Admiral Magus asks softly, coming up behind her. Abby almost looks at her, remembering just in time to keep her attention on the thread of Tim that ties his spirit to the body in front them.

“Yes,” she says, shaking her head to clear it of the whispered promises coming from the void. “He’s still there… I think.” There’s long silence in which the only noise is the rasp of the Magus’ tools over the surface of Tim’s neck and the soft sound of bottles and jars being uncapped.

“When we were seven, we went to the beach and I made a sandcastle that I wanted to show to our teacher. She was busy, and the tide was coming in, so Tim laid in front of it to try and keep the waves from knocking it over until she had time to come look.” Sarah’s voice shakes as she talks, and Abby can hear the love and devotion the girl has for her brother in the timbre of it. The craving recedes a little, allowing Abby to focus on the thread of Tim than the lure of the unspoken promises offered to her. She feels, rather than sees, Ducky’s interest perk up at the change.

“He is protective of you,” Ducky says, chair squeaking under him as he shifts.

A high laugh responds, wistful. “Oh yeah. I tried dating in high school and he used to get so defensive. He’d hack their computers and phones to make sure they weren’t into anything weird. Well, he did right up until I told him I’d break his PlayStation if he kept it up. One time, he found out a guy was cheating on me, so he changed every song on his computer to yodelling. Even the radio station in his car.” Abby smiles. In her words is McGee. The protectiveness, the love for his sister, his electronic magic, his spark of humour. It’s all there and, as soon as Abby focuses on it the thread of him becomes stronger.

“He writes the best damn reports out of the lot of you,” Gibbs cuts in. “Precise to a tee. Does his job right, the first time and every time.”

And there—his work ethic. His passion for his job.

“The first time I met him, he didn’t even flinch away from me,” Tony adds.

Their friendships.

Abby grips tighter to all of those things, determined to find the man they belong to.

 

* * *

 

Tony is pacing anxiously when Abby makes a low noise and slips sideways, eyes flickering shut. He hadn’t been fast enough to stop the bullet from hitting McGee—or Kate before him—, but he’s fast enough to catch her before she hits the ground, and he carefully pulls her aside after placing two fingers on the pulse point he hardly needs to check because he can hear the low thrum of her heartbeat under her skin, steady but slow.

“She alright?” Gibbs asks, leaning over them both, his blue eyes worried.

“She’s beyond exhausted, Jethro,” Ducky scolds. “This is far too much for her.”

Gibbs straightens and eyes the man. Tony suddenly notices with a kick of apprehension the way that Ducky’s form is beginning to blur at the edges, as though he’s wearing a badly tuned glamour.  “How about you, Duck? You going to be alright?”

“Just peachy. I do have to insist that perhaps you work a little quicker, Admiral. Even I only have so much power to give.”

The Admiral hums slightly under his breath, leaning so close to Tim that his nose almost brushes his neck as he works. “I am mending a person, Doctor, not a pot. Rushing would be ill advised.”

When Tony allows his gaze to wander around the room, the women’s faces are turned away from him, lost in their own thoughts, but Palmer looks about as frightened as he feels.

 

* * *

 

Sarah McGee is asleep against Ziva’s side when Ducky’s magic finally fails. Her only warning is a muted cry from Palmer as he jerks to his feet, huge eyes locked on the frail form of the ME as he staggers back.

“Duck?” Gibbs barks, jumping up from his seat next to the sleeping Abby.

“No fear,” Ducky wheezes, folding into himself and becoming distorted and chaotic. “A little rest and I’ll be rain as right. Right as… right.”

Ziva holds back a shocked gasp as his shape flickers and reforms into that of a darkly scaled horse with flaring eyes and heaving flanks, slumping onto its knees with an exhausted wicker. “A kelpie,” she breathes, noting the sharp teeth lining the horse’s panting mouth and the edges of the fins along the long, delicate legs. “You are full of surprises, Ducky.” Even Gibbs looks astonished, an unfamiliar expression on his face.

“I’m not finished,” warns the Admiral, lifting his head. For the first time, Ziva catches a hint of human emotion on his face, a flash of fear and grief that betrays his love for his son. “We can’t lose him now! We’re too close!”

Palmer scoots over to the water horse, running a soothing hand down his neck without any regard for the deadly teeth just inches away. “Echo is still there,” he says firmly. “Echo will hold him.”

“Can she do it alone?” Ziva asks him. If they fail here today, they lose more than just a valued co-worker and friend.

“She’s going to have to,” Palmer responds, closing his own eyes as though in prayer.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs watches the Magus straighten after what feels like an age, paintbrush still held tightly in a steady hand. “Done,” he states resolutely. “Not what I would call my best work. The _shem_ doesn’t hold as well over patched material, but it should be adequate providing… providing he is still able to return.”

Tony huffs angrily. “Of course he’s still coming back, we didn’t just break every law known to mankind to have a pretty statue of him to prop up in the breakroom.”

The Magus turns slowly and affixes the vampire with a cool stare. “He may have slipped away when your blood mages failed, or perhaps his spirit was never retained in the first place. We may recall an entirely different entity into his husk, something dark just waiting for an appropriate vessel to leap into. There is a reason such practises as what we’ve done here today are illegal, and not merely for the ethical quandaries they pose.”

“So what do we do now?” Gibbs questions him, flinching as a muscle in his back pulls from being seated awkwardly for too long. “How do we know if it’s worked?”

A weary shrug is the only respond. “We wait. We’ve done what we can. It’s on him now.”

 

* * *

 

Jimmy wakes up and the lights are dim, dozing forms scattered about the room. Everyone is just waiting now. How long will they wait before they give up hope? How long before someone above gets suspicious? Abby jerks next to him, her wide eyes meeting his. He can tell at a glance that she’s not really awake, stuck at the halfway point between sleep and consciousness.

“The candle’s gone out,” she says, the pain in her voice forming a lance into him, before closing her eyes and drifting back away. He leans his head on his knees, bleakness leeching away his ability to think or plan. _Echo._

If Echo is gone, what hope do they have left?

 

* * *

 

Tony blinks sleep out of his eyes, and Gibbs is standing alone by the autopsy table, his hand resting on the sunken plane of Tim’s cheek. There’s something in his posture and his bearing that Tony can’t stand to see, a kind of desperate, needing hope that he’s never thought Gibbs capable of. Gibbs isn’t supposed to be the desperate one; that’s Tony. Tony is always the one who needs too much, the one who clings too hard to what he has and breaks when it’s taken away.

“Come on, Tim, I didn’t give you leave to be quitting,” Gibbs whispers reverently to the motionless body, and Tony shatters just a little bit. It’s a haunting echo of the past. _“You will not die. You will not die.”_ And he hadn’t. Kate had, though. Gibbs’ determination hadn’t kept all of his team alive. He blinks something that is definitely not water out of his eyes and looks up, straight into Gibbs’ pale gaze. “If I don’t get to leave, he doesn’t either,” Gibbs states, leaning back against the steel surface and tilting his head to the side.

“You’re staying then?” Tony asks, his voice colder than intended. There’s bitterness between them, a yawning gulf that hadn’t been there before and neither of them are willing to trust each other enough to throw a rope across now.

“What would you say if I did?” Gibbs is careful, testing the waters. Seeing if Tony will accept his return a second time. Tony thinks of the Gibbs wall in Abby’s lab, and the way he’d failed to protect any of them in any way. In trying to save Abby from destruction, he’d dragged them all down and it had nearly cost Tim his life.

It still might.

“I’d say they’ll always welcome you… Boss.” His voice is just as careful. “You’re a valuable part of the team. Irreplaceable.”

“So are you.”

Tony thinks of a face staring out at him from a file on the director’s desk, and the lesson he’s bled to learn over the past few months. _“Not as much as you,”_ he thinks, but doesn’t voice the words.

 

* * *

 

There’s something foreboding in Tony’s eyes, something that Gibbs can tell he’s going to have to face at some point. He’s skittish, wary of being hurt, and Gibbs had been the one person he’d opened himself up to without fear of backlash, only to have that thrown back at him. The caution is understandable. That doesn’t mean he likes it.

The doors of autopsy open and he jumps out of his skin, whirling with the wolf within reach, teeth bared. Jenny raises her eyebrows at him, stepping over the sleeping Ziva to walk to him. Gibbs watches as Ziva’s eye flickers very slightly, nowhere near as peacefully slumbering as she appears.

“My access overrides that,” Jenny says, nodding her head towards the flashing red light of the infectious autopsy sign. “As you well know.”

“Come to arrest us?” He’s on edge, well aware that everything that’s happened in this room is unforgivable.

She waits a long moment before smiling sadly. “Did it work? Is he back?”

Gibbs shakes his head, looking down at his youngest agent, aching. “So, you’re not going to arrest us then. Why not?”

She touches his hand, the texture of her skin warm and familiar. “Because you don’t waste good, Gibbs. And Agent McGee is too good to waste.”

They wait together.

 

* * *

 

Echo gets up and pulls at his sleeve, growling insistently at him.

“Follow her,” Kate says, standing. “Come on.” They wander down a twisting path with vague forms passing them, the edges of the path indistinct and crumbling. Tim can feel the nebulous pull of something leading them on, a familiar destination at the end of it. Kate stops. “I can’t go further.” She sighs, biting at her lip, eyes wide. “I can feel it—past here isn’t for me.”

Tim opens his mouth and reaches back, grief slamming into him like a fist. His fingers ghost through her, as though she’s already being taken away from him. When he drops his hand down, the same happens with Echo’s fur. The dog looks up at him with a muzzle that’s suddenly become greyer than it is brown, her copper coat dulling as he watches. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers to them both. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Kate drops to her knees and wraps her arms around the dog, pulling her close and rubbing her face along her shoulders, as though to hide tears. “If you don’t go, you’ll be leaving everything behind,” she warns him. “I’ll still be here when you return, at the right time.”

“Echo?” His voice cracks, guilt making it waver. The dog had come here to save him. He can’t leave her.

Kate smiles. “She’s tired. She’ll follow once she’s had a rest.”

He nods, squaring his shoulders determinedly, the haunting vision of Tony in the dark spurring him on. He has to go back, if only to make sure that that future never comes to pass. “Goodbye, Kate.”

It’s the goodbye he never got to say the first time.

“See you later, Probie.”

He turns and follows the winding road, a soft, ancient voice echoing after him on the air. _“Don’t leave the path, Tim.”_

 

* * *

 

He opens his eyes.


	26. Us and our Goodbyes

McGee’s desk is stagnant, an island of calm in the bustle of the bullpen. Gibbs watches it from his post at his reclaimed desk. A jacket hung thoughtlessly over the back of the chair, waiting for rushed hands to scoop it up. A couple of tattered post-its hang off the monitor, waiting for McGee to return to attend to the tasks listed.

Fortunately, they have that option now.

Gibbs closes his eyes for a moment, remembering that split-second of overwhelming anticipation and relief when Tim had drawn a long, shuddering breath and opened his eyes. Sarah had flung herself over him, wrapping her arms around her brother and holding him as close as if she intended to never let go. Tony and Ziva had been right there, clapping him on the back and jovially pretending that they hadn’t been out of their minds with fear. Ducky and Abby were too exhausted to celebrate, merely grinning blankly up at him from their seats on the floor, a grief-stricken Palmer curled up next to Abby mourning his hound. Gibbs understands that pain. It’s one thing to lose a friend; another to send a friend into danger knowing the risks, and having that friend fail to return.

The Admiral Magus had kept his distance, watching the proceedings with heavily hooded eyes, expression tired but detached. Gibbs had stood next to him. “You will endeavour to keep him in one piece this time?” the Magus had asked.

Gibbs had huffed. “Always been my intention. You should stay. He almost died. Good time to heal old wounds.” He’d paused, knowing he was overstepping the mark. “He might want a father in his life.”

The only sign of emotion on the man’s face had been a bristle of his moustache. “‘We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us’,” he’d quoted, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully on his robe. “No, Agent Gibbs. I think you’ll find that bridge well and truly burnt. He already has a father in his life, I hold no part in it anymore.”

And he’d left, just as swiftly as he had arrived.

Movement to his side brings him back to himself as Tony saunters past, eyes flickering around the room with a slow contemplation that sends a cold tingle of warning down Gibbs’ spine. Tony’s barely spoken a word to him besides what’s needed for work in the week since he’d returned, but more than once Gibbs has looked up to feel the burn of his regard locked on him. He’s a man coming to a decision. Gibbs wonders if they can live with the outcome.

 

* * *

 

Tony walks into the director’s office and finds her holding a carefully typed report with an intrigued expression on her face. “Necromancy has one weakness, do you know what it is, Agent DiNozzo?” she asks him as he enters, waving a hand to indicate closing the door. He does so and stands in front of her desk, posture ready.

“No, ma’am.”

“Contact. It’s blood magic. A lot of what it does requires prolonged physical contact. Which, as you can imagine, would be rather difficult when faced with an angry Mossad assassin.”

“Or a pissed off werewolf.”

She laughs, putting the report down. “Indeed. Which was the final fate of the last of our little necromancy ring in the end. Taken out by one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Conveniently, enough evidence on his body to also nail him for the murder of Charles Sterling and draw the attention of interested parties away from NCIS.”

“Better men have died at the same teeth.”

His voice is a monotone, and he can tell that she’s watching him with considerable interest at this point. “You’re not here to ask about the loose ends of your last case, are you?” she asks.

He meets her gaze without flinching. “You once offered me a chance to be out from under his shadow. Is that offer still open?”

She’s silent, examining him carefully for any sign of hesitation or anger on his part. One sign that he’s doing this out of spite, and he knows she’ll refuse him the op. “Why now?” she asks instead, unlocking a drawer and pulling out the folder that’s begun to haunt his dreams, sliding it across the desk to him.

“I’ve learned a lot from Agent Gibbs, more than I could have learned anywhere else,” he tells her. “The last thing he taught me is knowing when it’s time to move on.”

“And now?”

He grins, showing his fangs in an easy leer. Tony DiNozzo wouldn’t have dared to be so disrespectful to the director, but that isn’t who she wants. She wants the Tony DiNozzo his father had tried to make of him. “It seems about the right time for the prodigal son to return to the fold.”

He flicks the folder open and stares down into his sire’s eyes.

Time to go home.

 

* * *

 

Abby turns on the lights to her lab and almost jumps a mile when Gibbs’ profile is illuminated by the sudden brightness. “Gibbs!” she yelps, still not used to his sudden return. “What’s happened? Has something happened to Tim? Is he okay? Are you okay? Oh gods, you’re not leaving again are you? I’m running out of blu-tac…”

He stands, taking her free hand and raising an eyebrow at her in the ‘calm down Abby’ expression she’s missed so goddamn much. “Alright, Abs?” he asks in his steady, gruff voice. There’s a hint of reproof in his tone, and her heart sinks when she realises he’s come down for _that_ talk. She’d known this was coming eventually.

“I know it doesn’t make it at all better, what I did, but I just want you to know that I did it to find you,” she admits, looking down at her boots as her vision begins to waver. “Do you know what it was like to almost lose you, Gibbs?”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into a hug, smelling like wolf and sawdust and _Gibbs_. She was right—Tony isn’t anywhere near as good a hugger as Gibbs is. “I think I got some small inkling,” he says tautly, and she remembers the lost look in his eyes when faced with the prospect of Timmy’s death. “You saved Tim’s life, Abby. I think that makes up for this.”

“Does it?” She really is crying now; horrible, wet, sloppy tears that make her nose red and eyelashes clumpy.

He brushes his lips against her cheek. “Yeah. So long as you don’t do it again. Ever.”

She thinks of the slow way Timmy speaks since his return, the way he struggles to reach for words and thoughts that once would have come easily to him; the cane that Ducky has used since that night that he leans heavily on as he walks; the pallor of grief over Jimmy’s shoulders as weeks pass without Echo’s return. “I won’t,” she promises. “We’ve suffered enough from it.”

 

* * *

 

Echo’s bed is empty, and Jimmy can’t walk past it without feeling remorseful. On the fifth day, he put her bowls away, unable to stand the cheerfully painted letters of her name staring accusingly at him anymore. Even his rats fail to lift his spirits, their desperate attempts to clear the melancholy in the apartment by doing increasingly complex acrobatics shattered every time he glances over at them unexpectedly and finds them glumly looking down at her empty bed.

He’d do it again in a heartbeat, and that’s the worst part.

Abby lets herself in after a week and a half, and Jimmy isn’t sure how he feels when McGee follows her, his eyes instantly finding the dusty basket. Abby ignores him, moving straight over to it and placing an unlit candle in the centre. “In case she comes back,” she says firmly.

McGee sits next to him and Jimmy can feel his misery emanating off of him, the knowledge that he’s the cause of her loss. “She’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Jimmy tells McGee, echoing his earlier thoughts.

“I know,” McGee carefully states. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

For the first time in his very, very long life, Donald Mallard feels his age. He climbs out of his car wearily, the weight of his centuries resting heavily on his shoulders, and grips with a shaking hand the blasted cane that has become his constant companion. Nothing he hadn’t expected, what with the momentous spell casting he’d participated in, and certainly better that he bore the brunt of it than young Abigail. After all, had it gone terribly wrong, he had enjoyed quite enough of those centuries to go peacefully onto the next world. Abby still has all of her life left to her and, now, thanks to them both, so does Timothy. Not that he isn’t glad that he had survived the resurrection of Timothy. There is a concert next month that he’s greatly looking forward to, especially if he can coax Jethro along. The man needs some culture, and not the kind found in a basement.

“Nice stick, Duck,” the man in question comments, coming up silently alongside him. “Didn’t know you were coming today.”

Ducky takes a deep breath and observes the gathered crowd with a careful eye. He can pick out the ones who have come to gawk as easily as he can see the ones who had been directly affected. Not that it matters in the end. They’re all here to reminisce. “Get the flowers from the car, Jethro, there’s a lad,” he instructs him, holding back a smile as he jumps to do his bidding. It’s a comfort to see him acting so normally once more. “Let us go pay our respects to those who have fallen.”

“The Dead Men who never left those pits,” Gibbs comments, keeping pace with him as they hobble slowly to the statue erected in memory of those who had never escaped the slavers. A man standing above a winged horse laid down, delicately sculpted wings mantled against its back. At first glance, the man is threatening. It looks as though he is binding the horse with chains, the horse’s head thrown back in terror.

Up close, Ducky can see that there isn’t fear in the curve of the equine neck, but trust, and the man’s hands hold broken chains to be cast aside. This is no imprisonment; instead, a liberation. Under them are the names of those lost, endless lists that cover the entirety of the podium. His heart sinks as he noted names such as ‘young boy with brown eyes and blonde hair’ or ‘female _Canis mesomelas_ therian with one brown ear, one black’. Many had died without names, their identities taken from them. Gibbs steps up beside him and reaches out to run a considerate finger along the carved ‘Zach Tanner, _Canis familaris_ therian, aged 6’.

“Too young,” says a female behind them, a grating quality to her voice that Ducky recognises as the one Gibbs himself had carried upon first being rescued. A voice unused to being used. They turn and there’s a woman behind them, her two children clinging warily to her despite looking about eleven and thirteen respectively. Children long devoid of their mother, frantic to have her home.

“Is there an age when it becomes right to die?” Gibbs responds. Ducky’s breath is taken away by the pain in his gaze when he looks at her. There’s iron scarring around her neck, and a wolf in her eyes. She nods to them, laying a single flower down and walking away without looking back once.

“Friend of yours?” he asks when she’s out of earshot.

“Victim,” Gibbs says heavily, and that’s the last they speak of it.

 

* * *

 

Tim finds that everyday more and more of himself returns from the foggy place he’d fallen into. Eventually, he feels confident enough to venture from his home where he’s been hiding with Sarah to fuss over him, sure that he can manage a trip to the supermarket without stumbling over his words and fumbling for thoughts that slip away from him like smoke. He even goes into work one day, intending to see if there’s any paperwork he can do while on prolonged leave, exchanging confident greetings with the security guard as they let him into the building. The bullpen is empty, his teammates out on a case probably, and he takes his time over his computer, delighting in being back in the workplace. Finally, he prints out what he’d wants and goes to leave a sheet on Gibbs desk awaiting his signature.

Except, there’s something already there.

Tim picks up the credentials that sit atop the gun and flicks them open to find Tony’s face grinning back at him, and his heart sinks.

 

* * *

 

Tony had not listened to her when she had told him to get better locks. The ones on his door have been picked multiple times before and give way easily under her tools. She is a little miffed to open the door and find Tim standing motionless in the passage. He could have at least let her in if he had heard her scrabbling about at the lock. Although, judging by the distant expression on his profile, he has not even noticed her.

“McGee?” she calls, edging around him, and sucking in a shocked breath at the sight that awaits her.

“You know, he left every other job after two years,” Tim states, voice echoing endlessly in the empty apartment. “Guess he got packing up in a hurry down to a fine art.”

There is not even a whiff of Tony in the apartment, the carpets freshly cleaned and the walls washed down. Even Abby would be hard pressed to find any trace that Anthony DiNozzo had ever even set foot into this building.

Except for two items on the counter.

Ziva pads across the damp carpets and picks one of those items up, a battered volume of nursery rhymes. When she flips it open, the title page has a rough ‘Kelly Gibbs’ scribed crookedly across it. Tim follows her and touches the tiny muzzle of a finely hand-carved wolf with one finger.

“What are these?” Ziva asks him, curious as to why they had been left behind when he has taken everything else.

Tim swallows and picks up the wolf, cupping it as though it is precious. “Memories.”

 

* * *

 

Fornell scents him first, but only because he is the only one there attuned to the man. Ignoring the soft calls of those wolves unsure about this scarred stranger approaching them, he lopes out of the bustle of the pack with his tongue lolling and tail held at a friendly height. _“Long time since you last blessed us with your presence,”_ he sends cautiously to his old friend, unsure as to why the man has finally chosen to return.

Gibbs looks about at the milling wolves with something akin to longing in his eyes. _“Long time since I ran with anyone,”_ he admits, the ghosts of Shannon and Kelly still haunting him. He’d left the pack after their death and hadn’t returned.

_“Run with me?”_ Fornell offers to him. _“See if Mexico slowed you down at all.”_

Gibbs barks a laugh as he bounds after him, keeping pace easily despite the deep scarring on his flanks and neck. _“You think there’s any chance of slowing down running after Franks? The man doesn’t know the meaning of retirement.”_ Fornell doesn’t answer, sensing a lost loneliness in the other wolf that hadn’t been there in years. There’s no point in prying, Gibbs will tell him when he’s ready and not before. And, finally, he says, _“DiNozzo’s gone,”_ with his tone carefully controlled. They scent a buck on the wind and turn as one, slowing their pace to travel silently. _“Handed in his badge and gun and left without a word. House empty. Cell disconnected.”_

_“And you let him go?”_

_“Didn’t really get given a choice, Tobias. He waited until I wasn’t there to pull this stunt.”_

Fornell snorts, rolling his eyes. _“He’ll come back. Give him time. You came back in the end.”_

Gibbs slows to almost a stop, considering and starts to nod, before snapping his head around as they both become aware that they’re not alone. Fornell’s mouth gapes open when the dragon steps out from the trees, long, brightly-scaled body seemingly impossible to miss, and yet they’d run practically under it. The beast is taller than they are, cobalt blue and peering down at them over a haughty muzzle with slitted reptilian eyes.

_“Wolf Leroy?”_ it sends, voice old and booming in their heads. Fornell shakes his head to try and clear his brain of the echoes of the loud call. Gibbs doesn’t move as the dragon lowers its long head to peer intently at him. _“You are the wolf Leroy?”_

“ _Yes.”_

It nods and trills, a long note that makes Fornell’s teeth tingle. _“I was sent to give you my son’s regards, and this.”_ Delicate talons reach out, depositing a small bag on the floor in front of them. _“Some of his scales. I believe that humans will pay rather a high price for them, if you are inclined to sell. They are willingly given, so you needn’t worry about being cursed. Or, if you so wish, you may keep them and if you ever find yourself in need, you can use them as tokens to request our aid. Our family is indebted to you for your services to our son.”_

Gibbs is staring at the bag as though he doesn’t understand, tail and ears low and muzzle furrowed in confusion. Fornell stays back, wisely deciding to avoid antagonising the giant, magical lizard.

_“Your son died,”_ Gibbs says slowly, haltingly. _“I didn’t… I couldn’t save him.”_

Another lilting noise, this time laughter with a hint of bells. _“Hardly. Do you think it beyond us to create the illusion of his death? Your acts sent the rats scurrying from their holes with our son as their captive and flushed them straight towards us in their panic. He is alive, and recuperating. And much less likely to wander away from our homelands again.”_

Gibbs doesn’t answer, seemingly frozen with shock, so Fornell awkwardly steps forward, flinching when the dragon’s regard turns to him. _“Thank you, sir,”_ he says, gratitude infusing his voice. _“You do my brother a great honour.”_

Its eyes flicker with a multitude of colours. _“Ma’am, I believe is the correct term of respect_ ,” it corrects. _“I am female, or so far as your kind understands it. But I have completed my purpose here, and wish to be home. Farewell, brother wolves.”_

She flickers, form shifting and wings slowly opening from where they’d been almost invisible against her back. Fornell is struck anew by the beauty of the creature as she takes to the air, colours shifting endlessly as she melds into the scenery.

Gibbs startles to life. _“Wait!”_ he barks, bounding forward a few steps. _“Your son’s name, what’s his name?”_

There’s a distant whistle of laughter. Apparently, dragons find everything very humorous. _“We named him Skysong as a child but, as is the custom of our people, after suffering great hardship he was allowed to choose his own adult name.”_

_“What is it?”_

_“Wolfwind.”_

There’s long silence as the sound of her wings fades, before Fornell finally shakes himself awake and turns to his old friend. He can hear the calls of his pack on the wind. _“Coming home?”_ he asks.

Gibbs hesitates, then turns to follow. _“Yes.”_


	27. Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone returning, this fic has been drastically rewritten as of February, 2018. Two new chapters (chapter 2 and 27) have been added, and the rest have been greatly edited/fleshed-out to the sum of some 10k extra words. This is in preparation for me finally finishing this series over the next coming months!
> 
> To anyone new who just read this because it popped back up on the frontpage, welcome and I hope you enjoyed it! And to any old readers--thanks for coming back!

Before Kate Todd, before Jimmy Palmer and NCIS and everything that had followed, the dog-not-yet-known-as-Echo still walks the foggy paths. She’s waiting for something, some purpose that’s unknown to even here. There’s something wrong with this place. The paths have always existed, and always will right up until Death walks them himself for the final time, but something is changing them. Something dark and dangerous. Something that lurks where the paths fade into nothing.

Her kind watches. While the something lurks, they cannot face it. Their paws cannot leave the foggy paths they follow, now that they are banished forever from the mortal world. They must wait until that something reveals itself before they will be able to stop it.

She sniffs it on the wind; it smells of many things. War and hunger and sickness and death.

Then, she turns and walks back the way she came, searching for a beginning. A sign that it’s time for her—and the other Cù-Sith with enough mortal blood to slip unnoticed to the other world—to begin doing so. In the end, if they are successful, they will fix many things that have been broken, this place included.

And, in time, she finds that beginning. It’s a single death following many others just like his. But, it brings with it the same scent that she can find in those dark places where the something hides. The same scent of war, of doom. And this death is different, because it’s a first death, but definitely not a last.

It’s a child. He sits alone on the edge of the path, looking around in confusion as she pads up to him. “Hello, doggy,” he says with a crooked smile, and pets her. His clothes are clean and expensive, his hair neatly combed: a well-loved, much missed child with no sign of what killed him except for the bite-marks on his small throat. “What’s your name?”

_“I don’t have one,”_ she tells him honestly, leading him along the path. It wouldn’t do for this one to fade away, they’re going to need him later. _“What’s yours?”_

He shrugs, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Sammy,” he answers. “But that’s not what the man who stole me said I was called. I don’t like him. He was mean. My parents won’t be happy when they find out what he did.” And he touches his neck, mouth unhappy.

_“What did that man call you?”_ she asks, just to check. There’s a list of names she’s been given to watch for: in the coming time, they’ll be integral.

The boy answers, “Anthony. He said he was going to call me Anthony DiNozzo. That’s a dumb name. Sammy is much better. When are my parents coming to get me?”

She licks his hand. _“Soon enough,”_ she promises, because all things eventually die. And the victims of vampires? Well, they get to die twice.

Whatever still walks around in the body of Sammy, it isn’t him anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered._
> 
> **Tom Stoppard _, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_**


End file.
